The European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance (ESWA) has published its new briefing paper on Online Censorship and Digital Exclusion of Sex Workers within their program on sex work and digital rights and it is the first of four papers ESWA plans to publish in 2022. The briefing paper was launched at the online event on 28.02.2022, and featured speakers from sex workers community, civil society organizations and experts in this topic. Within the programme of the event, a representative of STAR-The First Sex Workers Collective in the Balkans joined the event for the panel discussion Online censorship and its impact on sex workers.
The participating in the panel discussion gave us the opportunity to highlight the problems that STAR encounters when using social media, such as bans, restrictions and suspension of accounts on the social media platforms that our organization uses to promote the sex workers’ rights, to promote our work and activities and topics related to sex work. We also shared cases of online censorship and discrimination against the community of sex workers when using Internet platforms and applications for promoting and offering sex services in our country.
In total, 21 respondents (12 representatives of organisations and 9 individual sex workers) from 17 countries contributed to the paper by taking part in our consultation process, including STAR-The First Sex Workers Collective in the Balkans.
The briefing paper is only available in English and you can read the report in full at the following link: