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On the 2 June 1975, 100 women occupied the Church of St Nizier in the centre of Lyon, France’s second biggest city. Their reason: police brutality and corruption, violence and discrimination. Their work: sex work. For several days, these women protested, resisted and organised, demanding respect and rights. Their act of resistance sparked a movement. Their words: “Our children don’t want their mothers in prison” remain a call to this day for dignity, protection, decriminalisation and recognition.  In the years since, IPPF’s French Member Association, Le Planning familial, has supported sex workers by hosting their meetings, assisting in the registration of the first sex workers’ association, and standing side by side when sex workers took their exploiters to court. Today, exactly 50 years since the St Nizier occupation, IPPF continues to stand in solidarity with sex workers of all genders who stand up and fight for their rights.  We defend the rights of sex workers - whether they sell sex because of choice, circumstances and coercion.  We believe sex workers when they tell us sex work is work. And we believe them when they speak of abuse. Sex workers know the difference. We ask feminist movements, organisations and activists to believe them too - in solidarity. Today, in France, Kenya, Colombia, India - and across the world, sex workers are organising - for the same goals that spurred the 1975 protest: to end criminalisation and police violence, to shift public attitudes, and to ensure that those who sell sex are respected. And to demand justice, resources, and choices — especially for women and marginalised communities. 

Stigmatising.  Ideologically driven.   Damaging.  These are just a few words that can describe this report.  The International Planned Parenthood Federation is a global feminist, sexual and reproductive health and rights organisation with decades of experience providing services to sex workers’ of all genders.  We denounce in the strongest terms the content of this report and the ideologically driven process that led to it.  The report ignores decades of international evidence and global recommendations by WHO, UNAIDS, Amnesty International - and more importantly sex workers themselves.   Sex workers' voices have deliberately been ignored in the drafting of this report, reproducing the patriarchal silencing and exclusion that sex workers face in their daily lives.  At times of increasing attacks on women’s and LGBTQI communities, this report is fuelling misconceptions and harmful stigmatisation. The report promotes policies consistently proven to violate sex workers’ human rights using human rights rhetoric and erase sex workers consent, agency and humanity  At a time when racialised and migrant communities are increasingly calling to end police brutality and impunity, this report only offers more criminalisation and policing - putting the lives of most marginalised sex workers at risk.  The International Planned Parenthood Federation support the full decriminalisation of sex work. and stands in full solidarity with sex workers, their organisations and their struggles for human rights.  There is no feminism without sex workers.  Sex work is work.