SALC’s Sex Worker Rights programme has the following objectives:
- To assert accountability for police abuse of sex workers.
- To assert sex workers’ rights to form an association and to engage in protests.
- To challenge incorrect interpretations of offences, including the offence of living on the earnings of prostitution.
- To challenge offences used to arbitrarily target sex workers and other marginalised groups.
Completed cases:
- Malawi: Case challenging the use of the offence of living on the earnings of prostitution to arrest sex workers.
- Malawi: Case challenging constitutionality of rogue and vagabond offence.
- Malawi: Case challenging mandatory HIV testing of women.
- Zimbabwe: Case challenging the refusal to allow sex workers to march.
- Malawi: Case challenging arbitrary arrest of sex workers.
Publications:
- The impact of the covid-19 pandemic on sex workers in Southern Africa (2021).
- Eswatini: Sex Workers & the Law (2019).
- A victory for the right to fair and substantial justice: recent cases from the Malawi High Court (2017).
- Know your rights: Sex work and the law in Malawi (2017).
- Accountability and redress for discrimination in healthcare in Botswana, Malawi and Zambia (2016).
- “They should protect us because that is their job”: A preliminary assessment of sex workers’ rights experiences of police abuse in Lusaka, Zambia (2016).
- No justice for the poor: A preliminary study of enforcement of nuisance-related offences in Blantyre, Malawi (2013).
Submissions
Advocacy:
- Eswatini: Sex workers and the law (2019).
- Malawi High Court rules mandatory HIV testing unconstitutional (2015).
- Malawi @ 50: Police sweeping exercises a cause for concern (2014).
- Living on the earnings of sex work in Malawi – a typical tale of misinterpreting the law to conveniently criminalise sex workers (2013).
- Holding police accountable for their systemic abuse of sex workers (2013).