During the 56th Regular Session of the Human Rights Council Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls (SR VAW), a Trans Advocacy Week delegate delivered a statement on behalf of 15 trans and gender diverse activists from the Global South and East. This statement was delivered on 24 June 2024.
This statement, delivered by Lady Gaga on behalf of APTN, challenges the SR VAW thematic report on Prostitution and violence against women and girls, denouncing the report’s use of the harmful term ‘prostitution’ instead of the widely accepted term ‘sex work’, and calling out the problematic conflation of trafficking with sex work that misrepresents sex workers. The statement highlights the lack of voices of the sex worker communities represented in this report despite numerous submissions and calls on States to demand full decriminalization of all aspects of sex work to uphold sex workers’ bodily autonomy and agency.