Justice

The Context

Criminalisation remains the single greatest barrier to sex workers’ access to justice in Europe.

Whether through direct criminalisation, “end demand” models, administrative sanctions, or local by-laws, punitive legal frameworks push sex work into unsafe conditions, legitimise police harassment, and deter sex workers from reporting violence or abuse. Criminalisation also undermines access to labour protections, housing, healthcare, and social security, reinforcing cycles of precarity and exclusion. Sex workers, in particular migrant sex workers, are at heightened risk of various forms of harms including physical, sexual, psychological, and economic violence, from a variety of perpetrators, including police. ESWA understands criminalisation to be a driver of violence against sex workers. Sex workers’ safety and access to justice for sex workers victims of violence can not be separated from our demands for labour rights and migrants rights, nor can these goals be achieved through reliance on carceral systems which expand police powers.

 

Our objectives

ESWA recognizes the decriminalisation of sex work as a necessary foundation for justice, safety, and equality for sex workers.

This includes challenging laws that criminalise clients, third parties, or associated activities, as well as regulatory regimes that function as de facto criminalisation. ESWA supports rights-based legal frameworks that recognise sex work as work, protect freedom of association and movement, and ensure access to labour and social protections without stigma or exceptionalism.

ESWA further aims to strengthen recognition of sex workers’ under victims’ rights and violence prevention frameworks, as well as to promote evidence-based violence, prevention, and response interventions for sex workers, in line with a transformative justice approach. ESWA advocates for a transformative justice approach as an alternative to traditional policing and criminal justice systems in addressing the violence, harm, and abuse faced by marginalised communities, including sex workers.Transformative justice focuses on enhancing capacities and resilience among communities, towards community based models of safety, including through the redistribution of resources allocated to criminal justice architecture. 

In the coming years, in line with our Strategic Plan 2026-2030, ESWA will expand its advocacy to encompass the rights of sex workers’ in closed settings, such as prisons and detention centers. Relatedly, we aim to challenge racial profiling, surveillance architecture,and immigration enforcement targeting sex workers, which is currently being ramped up in the EU. ESWA will continue to promote the rights of migrant sex workers by pushing back against harmful legislation like the Deportation Regulation, building community resilience, and advocating for rights-based alternatives to harmful migration policies. We will also continue to challenge conflation of sex work and trafficking, instead promoting rights-based anti-trafficking initiatives. 

 

Current activities

ESWA’s Access to Justice programme currently focuses on examining sex workers’ experiences of change following the decriminalisation of sex work in Belgium in 2022, and the introduction of a labour law in 2024. In collaboration with our members UTSOPI, BoysProject, Espace-P, and Violett, our aim is to use the results to influence policy and legislative drives towards decriminalisation of sex work across across Europe and Central Asia. Results of the survey shall also support partners in Belgium to orient advocacy with political actors and raise awareness of outstanding obstacles sex workers in Belgium face. The research will be conducted according to ESWA’s Gold Standard Guidelines for Safe and Ethical Sex Work Research, published in 2025.  

In 2027 the decriminalisation of sex work in Belgium is about to have its 5th anniversary. To mark that occasion, ESWA is planning to host a “Decrim Academy,” similar to our successful “Red Umbrella Academy.” 

The Academy will bring together sex worker-led organisations at various stages of advancing their own legal texts toward decriminalisation in their national contexts. The aim is to exchange knowledge about methodologies for drafting bills, ensuring a rights-based approach to labour provisions, as well as engaging politicians and the public in moving through legislative processes at national level. More information concerning ESWA’s “Decrim Academy” will be shared with members in 2027.

 

Our past activities

In recent years, ESWA has contributed to European-level advocacy opposing the expansion of punitive models, including engagement with EU institutions, European Court of Human Rights, UN mechanisms, and national governments. ESWA supports sex worker-led organisations to document the harms of criminalisation, engage in strategic advocacy, and intervene in legal reform processes.

Rights not Rescue Programme 

In 2019, ESWA initiated its flagship programme ‘Rights, not Rescue: Sex Work, Migration, Exploitation and Trafficking', This project aimed to empower migrant sex workers to fight trafficking and exploitation in the sex industry and strengthen ESWA’s advocacy on issues relating to migration, exploitation and trafficking. Through this programme, ESWA (then ICRSE) was able to provide financial and technical support to 12 sex workers’ rights organisations which developed national activities to tackle exploitation and amplify the voices of migrant sex workers. 

Engagement with EU, COE and OSCE institutions:

  • EU Platform on Victims’ Rights
  • The Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants
  • Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women
  • Freedom Collaborative