Geneva Conference Update

Dear Colleagues,

I am now working on the registrations and content of sessions for the Geneva Aids Conference now that scholarship results are being announced. I will be in touch with all those who have asked for free registrations. It seems that they are not as plentiful as I had been lead to believe so I may not be able to arrange them for everyone in the USA who wants them, although I am sure no-one who come to Geneva will fail to get to those parts of the conference they want to attend.

The programme for the community symposium needs to be printed soon so please send me any suggestions for speakers on either priorities for research or strategies for making sex work safe. These are to be discussion topics rather than presentations about projects. For example if you have a particular issue that you have encountered in your work and that you think would be helpful to have raised in an open forum of sex workers and health professionals. For example my issue is about the about different (and sometimes competing) interpretation of data about commercial sex and HIV/sexual health I hear. I plan to raise the topic and invite a UNAIDS epidemiologist to comment. Those who suggest topics could speak about it briefly or suggest a speaker. It's quite important that we have some volunteers for this because it's not appropriate for me to set the agenda for the entire meeting.

Please note that the community symposium session has been changed from the Wednesday to the Monday.

Yours,
Cheryl Overs

Information about sex worker activities at Geneva Conference

• A one day satellite hosted by ASPASIE on Sunday June 28 for sex workers and supporters at a community centre in Geneva. Aspasie are distributing a questionnaire about what you would like to do at the meeting. It is also available in French.

• A Hookers Ball hosted by ASPASIE on the Tuesday night in a grand dance hall. Of course sex worker artists would be most welcome to perform.

• ASPASIE and the NSWP have a booth in the displays section for sex work projects to sell and display their wares.

• EMPOWER have a booth for Asian Pacific projects and so do PASST (transgender).

• A network session at the Community Rendez-vous (pre-conference):

  This will be a plenary session in which each of the sex work networks makes a presentation and then regional or interest group meetings. The future of a global network could also be discussed. The agenda will be finalised by the regional networks in the coming weeks. Anyone who represents a network OTHER than those who are already to be invited (sex workers networks of Latin American, Asia Pacific, the Europap and ISWFACE organisations and the Ivan Woffers/Marie Laga Network) please contact me if you want space at the networking meeting (but not national networks)

• A session in the community Symposium, Monday 5.30 - 8 p.m. on developing strategies and advancing the research agenda

• In the draft conference programme there were to be two sessions on "commercial sex workers" but that has been changed to:
  
  • one session on "commercial sex: female workers and male clients"

  • a session on transgender which is not sex work specific (this is because there were a couple of excellent abstracts on transgender without being about sex work and it seems time to think about transgendered people other than just as sex workers)

  • A keynote speaker session on "male sexuality" in which Shane Petzner is a speaker(I argued to no avail that a female worker should also speak about male sexuality)

  • Two sessions on sexual identity and behaviour among men who have sex with men in industrialised and developing countries respectively( this way there is more stuff on male sex work than if there had have been a single session on it)

• Joanna at ASPASIE has booked several hotel rooms at 45f a night which is very cheap for Geneva.($US30) Her address is below. There is NO accomodation in Geneva at that time. Do not consider going to Geneva with less than $US 50 US a day spending money. I can arrange free registrations for volunteers working on the sex workers events such as staffing the booth.

• The ball tickets are to be $3O US which means that many of the scholarship delegates from developing countries won't be able to go. Can you sponsor a ball ticket for some-one from Africa, Latin America or one of the less developed Asian countries. If so let me know and I will work out an easy way to get the money (in francs) to Aspasie, possibly via some-one coming from the US rather than a bank.

And from ASPASIE

We are currently organizing a SMALL COMMUNITY MEETING opened to all people directely concerned with prostitution. Most of the meeting will take part in French, however, there will be workshops in other languages (German, English, Spanish) and we will try as much as we can to provide participants with a comprehensive view of the venue with interpreters.

Wether you plan to come to Geneva this Summer or not, we kindly ask you to help us in our effort and assist us in the following ways.

• Read the following information,

• Answer the following questionnaire in eather French, English, German or Spanish,

• Spread the information around you to all interested people.

We are looking foward to hear from you or meet you next June.

The Organization Committee