Mass demonstration in Madrid on International Women's Day
Multitudinaria manifestación en Madrid en el día internacional de la mujer
Priority Areas
Supporting feminist, women’s rights and gender justice movements to thrive, to be a driving force in challenging systems of oppression, and to co-create feminist realities.
Across the globe, feminist, women’s rights and gender justice defenders are challenging the agendas of fascist and fundamentalist actors. These oppressive forces target women, persons who are non-conforming in their gender identity, expression and/or sexual orientation, and other oppressed communities.
Discriminatory ideologies are undermining and co-opting our human rights systems and standards, with the aim of making rights the preserve of only certain groups. In the face of this, the Advancing Universal Rights and Justice (AURJ) initiative promotes the universality of rights - the foundational principle that human rights belong to everyone, no matter who they are, without exception.
We create space for feminist, women’s rights and gender justice movements and allies to recognize, strategize and take collective action to counter the influence and impact of anti-rights actors. We also seek to advance women’s rights and feminist frameworks, norms and proposals, and to protect and promote the universality of rights.
Our actions
Through this initiative, we:
Build knowledge: We support feminist, women’s rights and gender justice movements by disseminating and popularizing knowledge and key messages about anti-rights actors, their strategies, and impact in the international human rights systems through AWID’s leadership role in the collaborative platform, the Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs)*.
Advance feminist agendas: We ally ourselves with partners in international human rights spaces including, the Human Rights Council, the Commission on Population and Development, the Commission on the Status of Women and the UN General Assembly.
Create and amplify alternatives: We engage with our members to ensure that international commitments, resolutions and norms reflect and are fed back into organizing in other spaces locally, nationally and regionally.
Mobilize solidarity action: We take action alongside women human rights defenders (WHRDs) including trans and intersex defenders and young feminists, working to challenge fundamentalisms and fascisms and call attention to situations of risk.
Related Content
WITM - Refreshed Intro Text (EN)
🚨New report out now🚨
Where is the Money? An Evidence-Driven Call to Resource Feminist Organizing
This new report shines a light on the resourcing realities of feminist and women’s rights organizations amid unprecedented political and financial upheaval. Drawing on over a decade of analysis since AWID last Where is the Money? report (Watering the Leaves, Starving the Roots), it takes stock of the gains, gaps, and growing threats in the funding landscape.
The report celebrates the power of movement-led initiatives to shape resourcing on their own terms, while sounding the alarm on massive aid cuts, shrinking philanthropy, and escalating backlash.
It calls on funders to invest abundantly in feminist organizing as essential infrastructure for justice and liberation. It also invites movements to reimagine bold, self-determined models of resourcing rooted in care, solidarity and collective power.
A complex and evolving network of anti-rights actors is exerting increasing influence in international spaces as well as domestic politics. Often backed by obscure funding, these actors build tactic alliances across issues, regions, and faiths to increase their impact.
We are witnessing fascist and fundamentalist actors that, while nationalist in their discourse, are completely transnational in their ideological underpinnings, political alliances, and networks of financing. In some cases these groups are backed by obscure funding flows, linked with big business, or far-right political parties. However, they also create strategic alliances, including, in some cases, with segments of the feminist and women’s rights movements, and distance themselves from more outwardly extreme elements to appear more legitimate. Anti-rights actors are also spreading and replicating their brand of anti-rights organizing - be that campaigning and lobbying or strategic litigation - across the globe.
Table of Contents
CitizenGo
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)
Funding of Anti-rights Actors
The Links Between Anti-trans Feminists and Christian Fundamentalists
Exercise: Let’s Map the Landscape
Movement Resistance Story: Catolicadas, a Powerful Communication Tool to Promote Gender Equality and Sexual and Reproductive Rights
Snippet - COP30 - Feminist Demands for COP30 col 2
What We Demand:
Climate finance as reparations: grants, not loans
Direct funding to frontline communities
Phasing out fossil fuels NOW
Defunding military and prison complexes
Corporate accountability mechanisms
Enabling environments for feminist alternatives to thrive
The liberation of Palestine, Congo and Sudan
Debt cancellation and an end to austerity
Rapid, direct and flexible funding to frontline communities
Decolonial feminist just transitions
Moving Conversation
Thank you, Ángela and Pilar.
Yannia Sofía Garzón Valencia I am a Black woman and a community weaver. I live in Santander de Quilichao in Cauca, Colombia. I am interested in the creative processes that organize sustainable collective life. I like exchanging thoughts and cooking, investigating and analyzing, planting seeds and learning from plants, reading and playing. I am currently coordinating the observatory of gender-based violence against afro-descendant communities in Colombia (@VigiaAfro).
The three of us were “sharing” the afternoon in a neighborhood south of Bogota.
There was an unusually large green playing area and we sat on little wooden stools under an elderberry tree. We were finally experiencing that other form of love – that pleasure of being together and listening to each other. For me, these kinds of chats are among the expressions of love that life had only recently allowed me to enjoy. I had not known this other form of love – the kinds found outside workshops, activist spaces, classrooms, or workplaces – to be possible. Yet we three friends spent the afternoon amongst ourselves and we did not pretend to be blind to the color of our respective skins. Rather, it was a lived factor that allowed us to intimately discuss the similarities and differences in our childhood and youthful experiences.
Those chats were unrelated to any upcoming activities of the Black movement in Colombia, but they still nourish me and acquire new meanings. Our closeness was woven through coming together, recognizing each other, and identifying the uniqueness of our liberations. And by realizing there is not just one but many paths to liberation – those paths we inhabited every time we said “no” and rebelled. Far from feeling discomfort, we met in an authenticity made of weakness and strength, one which brought us closer instead of separating us.
Our purpose on that beautiful afternoon was to just be – to have an awareness of simply being amongst ourselves. We walked through our pasts so that the memories that stayed with us were those we decided to keep as ours, and not those that fear let through and found a place for. We remembered exact fragments of TV shows, and sang songs written by artists who had taught us about loving well, hating well, cursing like the worst villain, and suffering like the best leading lady.
We told each other about our school pranks, and what remained in our subconscious after being exposed to the many ways the media repeats the same thing – after the teachers and nuns at school overexposed us to stories so that we would identify with and appropriate Cinderella’s aspirations for our own lives. This would set the tone for the rest of our story: the drama of the impoverished and diminished girl who is yet to achieve her full value through an act that redeems her condition. And that act can only be brought about by the gaze of a male who, at the very least, is white, hence deserving of what is between our thighs – his “main aspiration” – and the “perfect realization of our dreams,” which we are told should then be our main aspiration.
There were three of us there that afternoon. Each had been brought up in a different part of the country, but it was fascinating that we could all still quote fragments and situations from songs and soap operas that often – as we realized by getting to know each other – shared codes or symbols that were replicated, with a few variations, in our homes, in our first relationships, and in our neighborhoods and schools. Brought up by “dramas” (is that what that very successful genre is called?) where the more you suffer, the more you deserve, the issue of “how and in which situations it is acceptable and legitimate to suffer” becomes an important mandate on how the person who suffers should be seen, what they should do, and whom they should be. Some of us managed to liberate ourselves and “learn” a definition of love that could only be learnt in adulthood, shattering illusions, and accepting natural sin. And becoming aware of the industrial production of a virgin, which we may refuse to look like as she has no place in our understanding, and the disappointment this alienation brings.
After singing, we reviewed our early sexual explorations. I never thought that most people experienced them before the age of nine and that even in adulthood, those experiences, those memories, remain a heavy burden. Even today, in thousands of places, millions of girls and boys see their innocence curtailed by lack of trust and the ignorance we present them with when they try to explore their bodies. Blaming curiosity is a most efficient control mechanism. We went back to the brief conversations we had when we changed the history of our lives from cursed Black beings to a perspective that rebirthed us. We remembered how many of our aunts and female cousins left their homes, their core, their roots, to seek a future outside, elsewhere.
The future comes with a price: it demands that those relationships that marked our childhood are reshaped and confined to oblivion. They are our foundations, but they are not relevant if we want to move ahead. For us, advancing was to learn by heart what we do to ourselves with the opportunities we find elsewhere. That it is elsewhere, and not within us, that opportunities lie, that we are available, that we need to be outside. However, for many of our aunts and female cousins, the few opportunities to enroll and stay in an evening class or take a sabbatical from domestic work were paid for by becoming the first sexual experience of relatives living in the future. A future for which others before them had also paid for, and whose price they had already forgotten. The demand for this payment arrived with the same inevitability as a public utility service bill. We will not take up that legacy.
In Colombia and Latin America, there was an etiquette manual called La urbanidad de Carreño (Carreño’s Etiquette Manual). It was mandatory reading until the 90s in both public and private schools. The manual conditioned how bodies were perceived and my mother, taken in and brought up by Carmelite nuns, knew it by heart. The first time I read it I had to stop more than once to rub my stomach, which hurt from laughing so much. It has ridiculous instructions such as: take a shower with your eyes closed and turn off the lights to wear your nightclothes. Different chapters address how one is to behave at home, in the street, and during a dinner or lunch party – in short, the norms of good taste and etiquette. The ethical core of good citizens was the urbanity that allowed one to distance oneself from rural life. The same manual indicated that shouting a greeting to an acquaintance on the other side of the street was indecorous; good manners dictate that you must cross the street. By the same token, men must remove their coats and place them over puddles of water if accompanying a woman whose shoes should not get wet. I thought about greeting someone across a river, and how it is so hot where we live that we don’t require coats.
"She learned that to care for her belly, she needed to keep her tissues warm, to avoid the cold that comes through the soft spot on the top of the head, through the feet, the ears, so it would not hurt particularly at moontime. For that, you need to be careful about what you eat and what you don’t eat, how you dress and how you walk, as all that has to do with girls’ health. The woman elder says that, from her devoted grandfather, she learnt that cramps became more common when houses no longer had floors made of mud and/or wood. When concrete and tiles came, when the material making up the house allowed the cold to come in through the feet, tension also grew in the belly tissue."
The manual’s author, Mr. Carreño is the opposite of the grandfather of a woman elder born in Turbo. She told me once that her grandfather was a wise man, that he told her about birthing and how to take care of her body. She learned that to care for her belly, she needed to keep her tissues warm, to avoid the cold that comes through the soft spot on the top of the head, through the feet, the ears, so it would not hurt, particularly at moontime. For that, you need to be careful about what you eat, how you dress, and how you walk, as all that has to do with a girl’s health. The woman elder said that, from her devoted grandfather, she learnt that cramps became more common when houses no longer had floors made of mud and/or wood. When concrete and tiles came, when the material making up the house allowed the cold to come in through the feet, tensions in the belly tissue also grew.
Surprised again. Such a distance between Don Carreño and the wise grandfather in terms of being aware of life – as distant as the mandates of proper behavior that stifle your impulses and senses, even the most common sense that values health. At that moment, I was able to understand one of the many ways that concrete obstructs the earth’s breathing, and our own as part of her. I had not realized there was, and still is, the architecture and materials for taking care of our bodies. In Colombia, as well as in other countries, the materials used to make houses are taken as indicators of multidimensional poverty. A house built with concrete moves the home away from being considered poor. This is just one disappointing example of how progress pushes us to abandon the relationship between our environment and our body. Good taste and urbanity pushes us outside: to move forward, they lie, you have to go out there.
It bothered us to realize that neither our mothers nor fathers had spoken to us about menstruation, except when the brown stain had already smeared our knickers. They failed to preserve us from the shame that was supposed to be a natural feeling once menstruation had come. Along with menstruation came the belly cramps often endured in silence, because there was work to be done; some cramps were due to cysts, hematomas, or fibroids that killed the grandmothers who had discovered and forgotten the healing treatments, and then were forgotten themselves. That our mothers and fathers’ breaths turned colder and colder, but the Outside froze familiarity and, instead of warming our bellies, passed judgment with advice similar to warnings of the only thing men care about. This was applied to all men – legitimizing the plundering role of the phallus, as if its only option was to take what we have between our legs. The multiple versions of that truth were replaced by an unmovable and deeply-set naturalization: telling all women that we must preserve ourselves for one of them, for the one that will first introduce his penis inside us, for the one that will give us something in exchange, and that we are women only because we aspire to and let him put it inside us. As a girl I explored little penises and clitorises and, in between games among girls, the question was whispered: whose turn is it to play man and whose turn is it to play woman? And the answer: the beginnings of little orgasms, regardless of with whom. I guess the same must happen among male bodies.
The experiences and explorations of our aunts, female cousins, and acquaintances focused on the body and its nudity as taboo. They avoided expressing and naming it, to the point of covering it up, assigning new names to its excreting, expelling, procreating, and, just for us women, its receiving functions. Once I heard a woman elder in a workshop say that when she was living with her grandmother, her memory was of this old woman sleeping with one eye open, the other closed, and a rifle by the mattress. The softest night sound was enough for her to grab the rifle and aim. This is a common situation in the Colombian Pacific, where some harmful behaviors are normalized. Married and single men who like a young woman would enter her room at night – we call it gateada. It was a risk: if those with authority in the home realized what was happening, abuse or not, the man could be hurt or even killed.
This practice of taking the law into one’s own hands has failed to put an end to gateadas, even today. In that same workshop – as I kept telling my sisters – other participants said that neither they nor their mothers would leave their daughters alone with their fathers at bath time, unless the girls were wearing underwear. I remembered then my father’s voice saying, when I was seven, your mother never let me bathe you. After sharing this, another woman responded that, in contrast, her father would give her a bath naked in the courtyard of her childhood home until she turned seven, and then her eldest brother did it until she turned nine. She never felt anything strange in the way they looked at her; for them, it was just another task in caring for the most spoiled child in the home. She remembered being seen for what she was: a daughter child, a sister child, who did not like the water.
Once again childhoods, yesterday and today. We were surprised by that story, and it comforted us. Even I had seen things being different elsewhere; my daughter’s father bathed her in the tub until she was almost two. Even before turning two, he would give her a few soft slaps upwards on her bum, to make it bigger, as he said. Here, we could also speak of other dimensions of how we construct our bodies, but that is a different story. For me, it was one care task, among many, that we agreed to divide between ourselves before the baby was born. And the decision to not see every man as a lurking rapist does not mean they are not rapists, but instead that they can stop being so. There are also men and male bodies that have been brought up to never be rapists.
This is still happening. It happened to a friend of ours and to my own daughter. I thought: how can it be that some women are coupled with men they cannot trust to care for their daughters? I am sure that my mum loved my dad. And even though we seldom speak about the woman she was before becoming my mum, I know her experiences of abuse cannot be compared to the brutality and over-tolerance of those of today. But that is still a decision many women in many places make, and that leads to other questions. How often, how repeated were cases of abuse in our extended families to make women openly, or in indiscernible ways, forbid their partners from bathing their daughters? Is it related to the media overexposure we are subject to almost from birth? What makes family ties blur and turn into just bodily-satisfaction exchanges? Is it the proximity to urban values that cares so much about the right shapes of female bodies as objects of desire, and pushes male bodies to behave like owners and conquerors, fulfilling the mandate to mimic media representations so they feel safe in their identity? Is it concrete and other codes, like the Carreño etiquette, that sustain it? Is it encouraged by the need to forget certain relationships as the price of progress, that insistence on “doing for the outside?” What happens to what we learned in our times, those of us who, in secret or not, undertook sexual explorations as children? Were they erased by guilt? Were they the seeds of mistrust and shame in nudity? Were they the seeds of mistrust and shame of being inside oneself? Indeed, aren’t these learnings possibilities to trust in, understand the nudity of bodies as part of respecting oneself and others? These questions emerge in trusted spaces, where the fear to say what one thinks and feels is driven away by the intention of accompaniment. I imagine how many of us there are in all corners of this planet and I am certain these are not new questions, that messages in them are repeated, and that we find ourselves living the answers.
ExploreTransnational Embodiments
This journal edition in partnership with Kohl: a Journal for Body and Gender Research, will explore feminist solutions, proposals and realities for transforming our current world, our bodies and our sexualities.
نصدر النسخة هذه من المجلة بالشراكة مع «كحل: مجلة لأبحاث الجسد والجندر»، وسنستكشف عبرها الحلول والاقتراحات وأنواع الواقع النسوية لتغيير عالمنا الحالي وكذلك أجسادنا وجنسانياتنا.
In September 2016, the 13th AWID international Forum brought together in Brazil over 1800 feminists and women’s rights advocates in a spirit of resistance and resilience.
This section highlights the gains, learnings and resources that came out of our rich conversations. We invite you to explore, share and comment!
What has happened since 2016?
One of the key takeaways from the 2016 Forum was the need to broaden and deepen our cross-movement work to address rising fascisms, fundamentalisms, corporate greed and climate change.
With this in mind, we have been working with multiple allies to grow these seeds of resistance:
Movements can also benefit from new methodologies on Visioning Feminist Futures (Coming up soon!)
And through our next strategic plan and Forum process, we are committed to keep developing ideas and deepen the learnings ignited at the 2016 Forum.
What happens now?
The world is a much different place than it was a year ago, and it will continue to change.
The next AWID Forum will take place in the Asia Pacific region (exact location and dates to be announced in 2018).
We look forward to you joining us!
About the AWID Forum
AWID Forums started in 1983, in Washington DC. Since then, the event has grown to become many things to many peoples: an iterative process of sharpening our analyses, vision and actions; a watershed moment that reinvigorates participants’ feminisms and energizes their organizing; and a political home for women human rights defenders to find sanctuary and solidarity.
En septiembre de 2015, la Asociación de Trabajadorxs Sexuales de Hungría (SZEXE en su idioma original) celebró sus 15 años de trabajo en la lucha por afirmar los derechos y proteger a lxs trabajadorxs sexuales, así como por desmantelar el estigma contra ellxs
A SZEXE la crearon trabajadorxs sexuales sobre todo romaníes que trabajaban en la calle y sus aliadas, que se unieron para protestar por la sanción de una ley regulando el trabajo sexual. Se considera que el activismo por el trabajo sexual en Hungría comenzó en ese momento.
‘Zonas de tolerancia'
La ley contra la que protestó SZEXE fue «redactada para sacar a lxs trabajadorxs sexuales, sobre todo las de origen romaní, del octavo distrito de Budapest, Józsefváros, para poder mejorarlo y que resultara más fácil privatizar las propiedades en esa zona». Según esa ley, los municipios con más de 50 000 habitantes o con zonas con gran presencia de prostitución tenían que definir las llamadas 'zonas de tolerancia'. Ejercer el trabajo sexual fuera de esas zonas específicas pasó a ser ilegal, pero las autoridades se resistieron a definir dichas zonas. El resultado de esto fue que la actividad de un número significativo de trabajadorxs sexuales pasó a ser ilegal y muchas de ellxs fueron multadxs o arrestadxs.
La relación hostil que mantenían con la policía agravó aún más su situación:
«Lxs trabajadorxs sexuales no recurren a la policía en busca de protección frente a la violencia o a otros delitos sino que le temen» – SZEXE
Enfrentándose al maltrato
Una de las prioridades de SZEXE es brindar ayuda legal a las trabajadorxs sexuales y desde su comienzo la organización ha iniciado muchas acciones legales que llevaron a varios distritos de Budapest a verse obligados a 'identificar zonas de casi-tolerancia'. Pese a estos veredictos, SZEXE ha presenciado y documentado numerosos incidentes de maltrato policial contra trabajadorxs sexuales.
«La policía aprovechó la falta de certeza jurídica en torno a las zonas de tolerancia y en forma injusta se dedicó a multar a trabajadorxs sexuales para cumplir con sus cuotas».- SZEXE
En cientos de casos, SZEXE ha logrado cuestionar «las multas y detenciones arbitrarias realizadas por la policía».
Desde que Hungría se sumó a la Unión Europea en 2004, la asociación también comenzó a implementar proyectos pioneros e innovadores para «estimular procesos organizativos autónomos en la comunidad, empoderar a las trabajadorxs sexuales para que brinden servicios a sus pares en áreas como el VIH o como auxiliares jurídicas y hacer que se conviertan en defensoras activas frente a la marginación y la pobreza, todo esto con el apoyo del Fondo Social Europeo».
SZEXE también apoya a las trabajadorxs sexuales brindándoles educación entre pares, consejerías para migrantes, servicios de salud comunitaria y capacitación como emprendedorxs. También ha fortalecido su incidencia a nivel nacional e internacional. Como producto de sus esfuerzos de lobby y del informe sombra que redactaron, el Comité para la Eliminación de la Discriminación contra la Mujer (CEDAW) consideró «preocupante la discriminación contra las trabajadorxs sexuales y la inexistencia en el Estado de medidas destinadas a garantizarles condiciones laborales seguras».
La reducción del espacio para la sociedad civil en Hungría
Pese a las batallas ganadas y los numerosos logros alcanzados hasta ahora, «la situación de lxs trabajadorxs sexuales y su grado de movilización han empeorado en los últimos años en Hungría», según SZEXE. Como producto de la represión contra la sociedad civil que está llevando adelante el gobierno actual (de derecha), SZEXE es una de las organizaciones que han perdido «todas sus principales fuentes domésticas de financiamiento en un contexto donde se está reduciendo el espacio para la sociedad civil», mientras que a las ONG pro-gobierno se las financia a través de programas para apoyar «los valores tradicionales de la familia y la construcción /fortalecimiento de la identidad nacional».
Otro aspecto de esta tendencia preocupante es la ley de contravenciones promulgada en 2012, que tuvo un efecto desproporcionado sobre los grupos marginados como la población romaní, las personas sin hogar, usuarias/os de drogas y trabajadorxs sexuales. Esa ley generó discriminación y una vigilancia policial desproporcionada sobre lxs trabajadorxs sexuales que «reciben multas por violar regulaciones formuladas en forma vaga acerca del trabajo sexual o directamente en forma arbitraria...». SZEXE afirma que solo en 2012 se iniciaron más de 14 000 causas por contravenciones contra trabajadorxs sexuales. Esta situación se agrava por el hecho de que la falta de compromiso gubernamental con su derecho a la salud las ha colocado en una posición aún más vulnerable.
Movimiento(s) incluyente(s)
Para continuar desafiando la discriminación, el estigma y las violaciones a los derechos humanos (no solo en Hungría sino en todo el mundo) es necesario construir y sostener movimientos incluyentes, diversos y fuertes. SZEXE se afilió a AWID tras participar en el Foro Internacional de AWID 2012.
«Esa reunión constituyó una gran inspiración para las compañeras de SZEXE, que por primera vez se vincularon con el movimiento feminista internacional y conocieron las luchas de las mujeres en distintas partes del mundo, a veces muy similares a las suyas». – SZEXE
La participación de SZEXE en el Foro hizo que sus integrantes reforzaran su percepción acerca de las posibilidades de movilización colectiva dentro del movimiento (o los movimientos) mundial(es) por los derechos de las mujeres. «Inspiradas por la diversidad de voces y de causas en el movimiento, nuestra organización alza su voz contra el sexismo, la putafobia, la homofobia y la transfobia, el racismo y el odio de clase presentes en demasiadas sociedades».
«SZEXE quiere contribuir a un movimiento feminista que incluya las necesidades y voces de aquellas mujeres a las que los grupos de la sociedad civil y quienes formulan políticas muchas veces dejan de lado, como las mujeres trans*, trabajadoras sexuales o migrantes.»- SZEXE
Mira el video «Sex Workers Against the Tide» (en húngaro, con subtítulos en inglés)
L’activisme pour les droits et la protection des travailleuses-eurs du sexe en Hongrie
En septembre 2015, l'Association hongroise des travailleuses-eurs du sexe (SZEXE) a célébré 15 ans de travail au service de la lutte pour les droits des travailleuses-eurs du sexe, pour leur protection et contre leur stigmatisation.
SZEXE a été créée par des travailleuses du sexe, pour la plupart d’origine rom et travaillant dans la rue, qui se sont réunies avec leurs allié-e-s pour protester contre l'introduction d'une loi réglementant le travail du sexe. Cette action est souvent décrite comme marquant le début de l'activisme sur le travail du sexe en Hongrie.
« Zones de tolérance »
La loi contre laquelle SZEXE a protesté a été « rédigée afin de pousser les travailleuses-eurs du sexe, principalement d'origine rom, à quitter Józsefváros, le 8ème arrondissement de Budapest, de sorte que la zone puisse être réhabilitée et que les bâtiments publics puissent être privatisées plus facilement ». Selon cette loi, les municipalités qui comptent une population de plus de 50.000 personnes ou des quartiers où le travail du sexe est considéré comme envahissant devaient délimiter des soi-disant «zones de tolérance». Il a été déclaré illégal de proposer des services sexuels en dehors de ces zones alors que les autorités hongroises étaient réticentes à les identifier. Cela a poussé un nombre important de travailleuses-eurs du sexe vers l'activité illégale, un grand nombre d’entre elles ayant été condamnées à une amende ou placées en détention.
Pour aggraver encore la situation, les travailleuses-eurs du sexe entretiennent des rapports hostiles avec la police :
«Les travailleuses-eurs du sexe craignent la police, plutôt que de pouvoir compter sur elle pour les défendre contre des actes de violence ou d'autres crimes. » – SZEXE
Mettre la maltraitance au défi
L'une des priorités de SZEXE est de fournir une aide juridique aux travailleuses-eurs du sexe : Depuis sa création, l'organisation a initié de nombreuses actions en justice devant les tribunaux. En conséquence, certains districts de Budapest se sont vus obligés « d’identifier des zones de quasi-tolérance ». En dépit de ces décisions, SZEXE a été témoin à de nombreuses reprises de mauvais traitements à l’égard des travailleuses-eurs du sexe par la police et a constitué des dossiers d’information à leur sujet.
« La police a profité de l'absence de certitudes en matière juridique concernant ces zones de tolérance et les travailleuses-eurs du sexe ont été ciblées injustement afin de permettre à la police d’atteindre ses quotas d’amendes ». - SZEXE
SZEXE a contesté avec succès des centaines « d’amendes et de détentions arbitraires pratiquées par la police. »
Depuis que la Hongrie a rejoint l'UE en 2004, l'association a également mis en œuvre des projets pilotes innovants pour « favoriser l'auto-organisation de la communauté, pour autonomiser les travailleuses-eurs du sexe en leur fournissant des services juridiques et des services associés au VIH et en s’exprimant ouvertement contre la marginalisation et la pauvreté. Ces projets ont bénéficié de subventions du Fonds social européen ».
SZEXE soutient également les travailleuses-eurs du sexe en proposant de la formation par des pairs, des conseils en matière de migration, des services de santé communautaires, le développement des compétences entrepreneuriales et renforcé son travail de plaidoyer au niveau national et international. À la suite de ces efforts de lobbying et à la production d'un rapport alternatif, le Comité pour l'élimination de la discrimination à l'égard des femmes (CEDAW) a appelé le gouvernement hongrois à « adopter des mesures visant à prévenir la discrimination contre les travailleuses-eurs du sexe et de veiller à ce que la législation sur leurs droits à des conditions de travail sûres soit garantie aux niveaux local et national ".
Une société civile hongroise sur le déclin
En dépit des nombreuses batailles et victoires remportées à ce jour, "la situation des travailleuses-eurs du sexe et leur mobilisation a décliné au cours des dernières années en Hongrie", selon SZEXE. Etant donné les mesures de répression contre la société civile et contre certaines ONGs par l'actuel gouvernement d'extrême-droite, SZEXE se retrouve parmi les organisations qui ont perdu « toutes ses principales sources de financement national dans un contexte de rétrécissement de l’espace d’expression de la société civile ». Les ONG pro-gouvernementales, quant à elles, bénéficient d’une ligne budgétaire destinée à soutenir les « valeurs familiales traditionnelles et (le renforcement de) l'identité nationale ».
Une autre facette de cette tendance inquiétante est une loi sur les délits de 2012, qui a un effet dévastateur sur les groupes marginalisés, y compris la population rom, les personnes sans-abri, les toxicomanes et les travailleuses-eurs du sexe. Cette loi a favorisé la discrimination et un contrôle disproportionné des travailleuses-eurs du sexe qui reçoivent « des amendes pour non-respect de réglementations vagues ou arbitraires en matière de travail du sexe ». SZEXE déclare qu’en 2012 seulement, plus de 14.000 cas de délit ont été enregistrés contre les travailleuses-eurs du sexe. Cette situation est aggravée par le fait qu’en l'absence d'engagement du gouvernement pour répondre à leur droit à la santé, les travailleuses-eurs du sexe sont encore plus vulnérables qu’avant.
Mouvement(s) inclusifs
être créés et soutenus pour continuer à contester les discriminations, les stigmatisations et les violations des droits humains (pas seulement en Hongrie, mais à l'échelle mondiale). SZEXE a rejoint l’AWID comme membre suite à sa participation au Forum international de l’AWID en 2012.
"Ce rassemblement a vraiment été une source d'inspiration pour les collègues de SZEXE, c’était la première fois qu’elles ont eu l’occasion d’entrer en contact avec le mouvement féministe international et d’en apprendre plus sur les luttes des femmes, parfois très similaires, dans le monde" - SZEXE
La participation de SZEXE au Forum a renforcé sa prise de conscience du potentiel de mobilisation collective qui existe au sein du (des) mouvement(s) pour les droits des femmes. L'organisation, « inspirée par la diversité des voix et des causes du mouvement, s’exprime ouvertement contre le sexisme, la whorephobia, l'homophobie et la transphobie, le racisme et les préjugés sociaux que l’on retrouve dans trop de sociétés. »
« SZEXE vise à contribuer à un mouvement féministe qui soit inclusif des besoins et des voix des femmes qui sont souvent laissées pour compte par les mouvements issus de la société civile et par les politiques, comme c’est le cas par exemple des femmes trans*, des travailleuses du sexe et des migrantes.» - SZEXE
Visionnez le film "Sex Workers Against the Tide" (travailleuses-eurs du sexe à contre-courant), en anglais, avec sous-titres hongrois.
In September 2015, the Association of Hungarian Sex Workers (SZEXE) celebrated 15 years of work in the struggle for sex worker rights, the protection of sex workers, and the dismantlement of stigma.
SZEXE was established by predominantly street-based Roma sex workers and their allies who joined together to protest the introduction of a law regulating sex work. This is often described as the beginning of sex work activism in Hungary.
‘Tolerance Zones’
The law SZEXE protested was “drafted in order to push sex workers, mainly of Roma origin, out of the Józsefváros, Budapest’s 8th district, so that it could undergo rehabilitation and properties could be privatised more easily.” According to this law, municipalities counting a population of more than 50,000 or areas where sex work is considered to be pervasive had to identify the so-called ‘tolerance zones’. It was declared illegal to engage in sex work outside of these specified zones, however Hungarian authorities were reluctant to identify these zones. This pushed a significant number of sex workers towards illegal activity with a large proportion of them being fined or detained.
To further aggravate the difficult position of sex workers, there was an antagonistic relationship with the police:
“Sex workers fear the police rather than being able to depend on them for protection from violence or other crimes.” – SZEXE
Challenging Mistreatment
One of SZEXE’ priorities is to provide legal aid to sex workers, and the organisation has since its existence initiated numerous legal actions resulting in court orders for some districts of Budapest to “identify quasi-tolerance zones”. In spite of these orders, SZEXE has repeatedly witnessed and documented the mistreatment of sex workers by the police.
“Police took advantage of the lack of legal certainty surrounding these tolerance zones and unfairly targeted sex workers with fines in order to fill their quotas.” - SZEXE
In hundreds of cases, SZEXE has successfully challenged “the arbitrary fining and detention practices of the police.”
Since Hungary joined the EU in 2004, the association has also implemented innovative pioneering projects to “foster self-organisation of the community, to empower sex workers in providing HIV-related and paralegal services for their peers and become vocal advocates against marginalisation and poverty from grants of the European Social Fund”.
SZEXE also supports sex workers with peer education, migration counselling, community-based health services and entrepreneurial skills development, and has strengthened its national and international advocacy levels. As a result of its lobbying efforts and the production of a shadow report, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) called on the Hungarian government to “adopt measures aimed at preventing discrimination against sex workers and ensure that legislation on their rights to safe working conditions is guaranteed at national and local levels”.
Hungary’s shrinking civil society
Despite battles won and numerous achievements so far, “the situation of sex workers and their mobilisation has worsened in recent years in Hungary”, according to SZEXE. As a result of the present right-wing government’s crackdown on civil society and specific NGOs, SZEXE is among the organisations that has lost “all major sources of domestic funding in a shrinking civil society space” whereas pro-government NGOs have been financed through a funding scheme to support ‘traditional family values and national identity building/strengthening’.
Another part of this worrying trend is a 2012 misdemeanour law, which has a disproportionate effect on marginalised groups including the Roma population, homeless persons, drug users and sex workers. The law has led to discrimination and disproportionate policing of sex workers who face “fines for non-compliance with vague sex work regulations or arbitrary fines…”. SZEXE states that in 2012 alone, over 14,000 misdemeanor cases were initiated against sex workers. This situation is compounded by the fact that sex workers have been left even more vulnerable by the lack of government’s commitment to address their right to health.
Inclusive movement(s)
In order to continue challenging discrimination, stigma and violation of human rights (not just in Hungary but globally), inclusive, diverse and strong movements must be built and sustained. SZEXE joined AWID as a member as a result of its participation in the 2012 AWID International Forum.
“The gathering was truly inspirational for SZEXE’s colleagues as it was the first time when they connected with the international feminist movement and learned about the – sometimes very similar – struggles of women worldwide.” – SZEXE
SZEXE’s participation in the Forum reinforced its awareness of the powerful possibilities of collective mobilisation within the global women’s rights movement(s). The organisation, “inspired by diverse voices and causes in the movement, speaks out against sexism, whorephobia, homophobia and transphobia, racism and classism present in too many societies.”
“SZEXE aims to contribute to a feminist movement that is inclusive of those women's needs and voices, who are often left behind by civil society groups and policy-making, for instance trans women, sex workers or migrants.” - SZEXE
Watch “Sex Workers Against the Tide” (Hungarian with English subtitles)
I know you are so close. You can feel it can't you? How things need to shift and you need to centre yourself.
This is a letter to tell you to do it. Choose your healing. Choose to be OK. Better than OK. Choose to be whole, to be happy. To cry tears for yourself and no one else. Choose to shut out the world and tell them that 'you will be back in 5 mins'. Or five days. Or five years.
Or never.
Choose to not take it all on. Choose to take none of it on. Because none of it is yours. It was never yours. They told you since you were born that it was yours. Your family's problems. Your lovers' problems. Your neighbours' problems. The globe's problems. The constant whisper that these problems belong to you. They are yours. Yours to hold, yours to shoulder. Yours to fix.
That was a lie.
A bamboozle
A long con.
A scam.
The problems of the universe are not yours.
The only problems that are yours are your own. Everyone else can take a hike.
Allow yourself to drop everything and sprint off into the jungle. Befriend a daisy clad nymph, start a small library in the roots of a tree. Dance naked and howl at the moonlight. Converse with Oshun at the river bed.
Or simply drink a cup of tea when you need to take a moment to breathe.
Give yourself permission to disappear into the mist and reappear three countries over as a mysterious chocolatier with a sketchy past and penchant for dramatic cloaks and cigars.
Or stop answering work calls on weekends.
Let yourself swim to deserted island with a lover and dress only in the coconut shells from coconut rum that you make and sip at sunset.
Or say no when you don't have the capacity to create space for someone.
The options for holding yourself are endless.
Whatever you do, know the world will always keep spinning. That's the beauty and the pain of it. No matter who or what you choose over yourself and your soul the world will always keep spinning.
Therefore, choose you.
In the morning when that first light hits, choose you. When it’s lunchtime and it’s time to cry on company time, choose you. In the evening, when you are warming up leftovers because you didn’t have time to cook again, choose you. When anxiety wakes you up and existence is silent at 3:45 am.
Choose you.
Because the world will always keep twirling on a tilt and you deserve to have someone always trying to make it right side up for you.
Imagine opening a door which takes you into a conversation with feminist activists in other continents. This portal will transcend the barriers of UN CSW by pushing beyond language barriers, unaffordable travel, unequal protection from COVID19, and racist visa regimes.
This week, we’re putting a virtual spin on CSW by connecting and amplifying feminist activists' voices, to challenge the discriminatory barriers that limit participation and influence. By setting up connecting “portals” in New York City, Nairobi & Bangalore, we'll host a physical-virtual hybrid space for feminists to connect their struggles and build collective power.
Consider this calendar a gift, one that goes out to you and 9,500 members of our global feminist community. A gift of hope, renewed connection, action and community in a time of immense injustice and violence.
Let its stories remind you that across borders and struggles, we are many, we are powerful, and together we are building the worlds we deserve.
