Talk:European Sex Workers' Rights Alliance

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Although I can only prove it directly with a single quote from Gregor Gall 2006 p. 48, the ICPR appears to have gone dormant in the 1990s before it was relaunched as the ICRSE in 2005. The ICPR in Europe was relaunched in 2005 as the International Committee for the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe which drew up a charter of rights for sex workers (see later). Source: Gall, Gregor (2006). Sex Worker Union Organising: An International Study. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. p. 48.

The names are also virtually identical, with 'Prostitutes' changed to 'Sex Workers' and the addition of 'in Europe'. The ICRSE still exists, and operates from the website sexworkeurope.org. This nswp.org article covers them as well. Interestingly, however, they do not refer to the ICPR at all, but instead trace their origins to 'a small network of Dutch sex workers and activists gather[ing] in Amsterdam to organise a conference [in 2002].'

Nevertheless, I think we can say with confidence that Gall 2006 is correct that it's essentially the same organisation, even though it has newly registered itself etc. in 2005 with the Chamber of Commerce in Amsterdam. I therefore think we should rename this article to "International Committee for the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe".

Apart from the two World Whores Congresses and writing the World Charter for Prostitutes' Rights, the ICPR is almost never mentioned in any literature whatsoever as doing anything significant. Without this historical but relatively weak link to the current ICRSE, the ICPR on its own might not even merit its own Wikipedia page in the long term anyway. Connecting the two justifies its continued existence. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 18:58, 11 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

ICRSE = ESWA

Turns out I was a year and 3 months behind when I left my last message here. Turns out the ICRSE has officially renamed itself European Sex Workers' Rights Alliance (ESWA) in September 2021. Curiously, it does not trace its origins back to the ICPR and the World Charter of 1985, but: In 2002, against a backdrop of increasingly repressive legislation and policies, a small collective of sex workers came together to form a working group that would track, respond to, and fight back against such ‘progress’. Two years and 15 member groups later, the International Committee for Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE) set out to hold an event that would bring their community together and create a much-needed forum to declare, defend and fight for their rights. Lucrecia Rubio Grundell (2022) p. 199 provides an arguably compatible, if slightly divergent, narrative: ...(ICRSE)—since 2021, the European Sex Workers' Rights Alliance (ESWA)—reflect the centrality of both AIDS and trafficking in women and thus the alliance between sex workers and Global South feminists. (...) In turn, the ICRSE was established as an international organisation in 2004, in preparation for the 2005 European Conference on Sex Work, Human Rights, Labour and Migration, to the date, the most important sex worker mobilisation the EU has witnessed (...). It seems that this group of sex workers that began organising in 2002 was originally separate from what was left of the ICPR founded in 1985, even though both appear to find their origins in Amsterdam (as do many sex worker organisations and alliances). Perhaps along the way to that 2005 conference that they appear to have (co-?)hosted (and not just attended), the remnants of the ICPR merged into the ICRSE; the similar names suggest at least some influences. Anyhow, I decided to rename the article to its current name, providing RS to its renaming and also uploading its logo (PD-simple / textlogo / trademarked). The address is still the same: Eerste Helmersstraat 17 D in Amsterdam. (Around 2011 it appears to have been Van Diemenstraat 194). Interestingly, I found that in April 2020, still named ICRSE, it provided feedback to the European Commission on criminal justice against victims of sex trafficking, but also (obviously) a call to decriminalise voluntary sex work. At the same time, the website indicates it had only "1 to 9 employees" at the time, so it seems like a small organisation despite the hundreds of membership organisations in its network. NLeeuw (talk) 17:12, 13 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]