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.