For the past weeks, ESWA has been preparing to attend one of the largest human rights and tech conferences in the world: RightsCon. From May4th to May 8th, over 5000 people from 150 countries and 750 organizations and institutions were expected to gather in Lusaka, Zambia.
However, just a few days before the summit was set to start, the Zambian government issued a statement cancelling RightsCon citing security issues and concerns about themes that would be discussed at the conference.
It is extremely unsettling that governments are easily able to censor a conference about human rights, restricting the right to assembly, access to information and freedom of expression, without clear explanation of reasons behind it. Before Access Now issued their statement, many people in the queer and sex work community were distraught, believeing that the conference was censored because of the content that they were set to present.
The conference was set to have panels that focused on Sexual Health and Reproductive Rights (SRHR) with planned sessions involving partnerships with International Planned Parenthood Federation, African Sex Workers Alliance, European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance, ILGA World, Pan Africa ILGA, UNESCO, and the Centre for Intimacy Justice, alongside academic collaborators including the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
For sex workers, it is an all too familiar experience to be pushed to the margins and silenced when attempting to discuss issues that affect our safety and livelihoods. There is a painful irony in the fact that we were attending a conference centered on human rights specifically to address the censorship of sex workers, only for the conference itself to be censored.
“The cancellation disproportionately impacts those most affected by censorship, criminalisation, and digital exclusion. At a time when sex workers’ voices are already suppressed online, losing one of the few global spaces to connect, organise, and advocate is deeply concerning.” - Luca Stevenson, IPPF
We spent months preparing panels and private meetings to illustrate how censorship impacts our community. We dedicated time to networking, programming, logistics, coordination and finding funding for travel.
Often, sex workers are left out of consultations that focus on human rights. Our attendance to the summit meant that sex workers were included in the conversation and that we were consulted as experts to sit on panels and present the human rights concerns that our community face.
Our participation in RightsCon was intended to facilitate open, honest dialogue with stakeholders across various sectors, allowing us to collaborate on critical issues facing sex workers and other marginalized groups.
The systematic closure of digital and physical spaces for sex workers to network and share vital information, creates an environment of fear and repression. It severs the connection between the community and the very rights-based organizations that claim to protect them.
In times of extreme repression, we must build coalitions and find ways of supporting each other. Survival is a shared, interdependent project.
"We share a common interest, survival, and it cannot be pursued in isolation from others simply because their differences make us uncomfortable." - Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider
The statement issued from the Zambian government was considerably vague, which added to the distress of the participants who were supposed to attend (many already en route to Lusaka). RightsCon’s organizers Access Now worked tirelessly to have an open dialogue and to find out why the summit was cancelled. They later
issued a statement explaining the real issue behind the cancellation was the participation of Taiwanese civil society, and foreign interference from the Chinese government.
ESWA will collaborate with Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters (SRHM) and Repro Uncensored to present the roundtable discussion that we had planned for RightsCon. This will be in the format of a live online webinar about the harms of censorship that will also be recorded and shared. Please stay tuned, as this collaboration will be announced shortly on our social media.
With care and solidarity,
The ESWA team
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