On December 12, 2018, at the Ministry of Health of Ukraine with participation of UHHRU, first expert discussion on the ways of sex work decriminalization in Ukraine was conducted.

Charitable Organization “Legalife-Ukraine” and PLWH Network 100% of Life invited representatives of different stakeholders – state institutions, police, national civil society organizations and global sex workers’ networks – for discussion of the urgent need for decriminalization of the sex work in Ukraine.

The objective was to provide the opportunity for the participants – people with different beliefs, opposite attitudes and understanding of the sex work – to express their opinions, listen to each other and agree the continuation of the dialogue in this direction. More so that Ukraine has international commitments regarding improvement of the situation with human rights, according to which it shall decriminalize sex work.

Prior to the discussion of the problem, the Head of CO Legalife-Ukraine, Natalia Isaeva, told about sex work in Ukraine and presented the survey results, proving the negative impact of the current legislation on the level of violence and human rights violation in relation to the sex-workers.

Boglarka Fedorko, representative of the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE) and Stasa Plecas from the Global Network of the Sex Workers SWAN – Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network shared the experience of different countries, positive and negative consequences of different models of sex work regulation.

In the result of this meeting the working group for promotion of the legislation amendments and law enforcement practices was created.

The organizers of the round table would like to express their gratitude for the support to Olena Semyorkina and Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, Yulia Dontsova, Amnesty International Ukraine, partner organizations and all participants of the round table for readiness for dialogue and cooperation.

Source CO Legalife Ukraine