June 16, 2025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The United States is currently under scrutiny at the UN’s Universal Periodic Review, where United Nations member states gather input from civil society to assess how the US has ultimately failed to protect the human rights of vulnerable populations. The Sex Workers Rights Coalition, consisting of community members, leaders, and advocates, will send a delegation to Geneva from June 22-28 to meet with representatives from member states that are willing to publicly support the rights of Sex Workers and Transgender people in the United States.
The UPR is a United Nations mechanism that allows member states to review each others’ human rights interventions every five years based on treaties, conventions, and recommendations from previous review periods
In preparation for the UPR, the sex workers’ rights coalition have gathered over two hundred responses to a comprehensive survey giving sex workers an opportunity to speak frankly about their experiences with sex migration, healthcare access, criminalization, Transgender rights, substance user rights, climate change, and US policy in and outside the US on sex workers’ wellbeing. The coalition submitted two joint reports to the United Nations review of the United States, including one done in collaboration with the Sexual Rights Initiative (SRI).
The following recommendations by coalition partners and survey participants highlight issues sex workers, many of whom identify as LGBTQIA+, face as a result of the US’ criminalization of sex workers’ lives domestically and its insistence on exporting criminalization as policy to places where it offers aid through policies like the Anti-Prostitution Loyalty Oath. Our report to the UN highlights that within the US, “Being treated “well” by law enforcement/ICE is not enough. We want an end to the criminalization and policing of our lives. We consider every arrest for sex work a rights violation. In gathering information about activities to change patterns of policing, we heard from our communities that “we [sex workers] have always questioned police motives.”
The delegation is calling on the US to:
- End the criminalization of sex workers’ lives in all forms, eliminating discriminatory registries, surveillance systems (including those based on facial recognition and AI), and policing practices that violate our rights and target the most marginalized among us
- Recognize sex workers as legitimate rights-holders under international law, ensuring that our voices and expertise are included in all policymaking, data collection, and human rights monitoring processes
- Invest resources in education, job training, healthcare, and housing programs for marginalized people engaged in sex work;
- Create new funding approaches based on the promotion of human rights and health for sex workers and transgender people.
The sex workers rights coalition aims to secure at least one recommendation to the United States from a UN member state calling for the above issues to be addressed. This mission to Geneva is a refusal to ignore the mechanisms put in place to hold violators accountable because our lives are in fact, protected by the UN declarations on Human Rights, The Sustainable Development Goals, the Convention for Ending all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and other foundational human rights documents. Report contributor, Zee Xaymaca highlights that, “The US was instrumental in creating these human rights guarantees. Yet, in the current climate, the US is overtly anti-human rights. We won’t go willingly with this continued shift toward fascism where people are made increasingly vulnerable so that their fundamental freedoms can be trampled. We resist in every way available and welcome the support of our sibling nations to protect our lives and livelihoods in the face of constant government hostility. At the very least, the world must bear witness to the harm the US perpetrates against Trans and Queer BIPOC folks, sex workers, unhoused and migrant and otherwise vulnerable communities inside and outside of its borders.”
To date, the US has only accepted one recommendation from the UPR process pertaining to sex workers’ rights. In 2010, with Recommendation 86, Uruguay’s delegation called on the US to “Undertake awareness-raising campaigns for combating stereotypes and violence against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals, and ensure access to public services paying attention to the special vulnerability of sexual workers to violence and human rights abuses.”Access the 2025 UPR reports by the Sex Workers’ Rights Coalition and the Sexual Rights Initiative here and keep up to date with the coalition’s UPR work at bestpracticespolicy.org. The Coalition has also worked with 11 artists to illustrate the issues in accessible ways.
Contacts: N’Jaila Rhee – newjerseyrua@gmail.com and +15515878079
Penelope Saunders – bestpracticespolicyproject@gmail.com and +12024809061
Noor Z.K. — contact@sweetatx.org and +1 5123870037
The Sex Workers Rights Coalition – rightsnotrescue@protonmail.com
Beyonce Karungi– beyonce30a@gmail.com and +1 347 604 1364