The 41st session of the Universal Periodic review begins on the 7th of November 2022, and this session marks the beginning of the fourth cycle of the UPR. The working group session will take place from 7 November to 18 November 2022. 14 Countries will be under review during the session: Bahrain, Ecuador, Tunisia, Morocco, Indonesia, Finland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, India, Brazil, Philippines, Algeria, Poland, Netherlands and South Africa. In collaboration with our partners, the SRI collaborated on reports for South Africa, India, Poland and the Netherlands.
In between Human Rights Council sessions, there are many ways activists, movements and organisations can engage the UN human rights system to advance further their advocacy. In this post, we focus on recent calls for inputs by Special Procedures that provide avenues for feminist engagement.
This report has been jointly prepared by the African Sex Workers Alliance (ASWA), the Sexual Rights Initiative (SRI) and Sisonke, South Africa. It seeks to highlight the existing and ongoing human rights violations against sex workers due to restrictive and punitive laws and policies in South Africa It also outlines South Africa commitment to provision and protection of rights through various national and international mechanisms, including the previous cycle of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the relevant recommendations.
This report is jointly submitted by CREA and the Sexual Rights Initiative (SRI). The report outlines the current legal and policy context as relates to sex work - and the threat posed by ongoing legislative and executive initiatives that conflate trafficking with voluntary adult sex work. It focuses on how criminalization of all forms of sex work harms sex workers in India, and violates their fundamental rights as contained in the Constitution of India and in international treaties and norms, exposing sex workers to violence, police harassment, and hindering access to justice and healthcare.