Mission:
Desiree Alliance is a national coalition of current and former sex workers working together with supporting networks for an improved understanding of sexual policies and its human, social and political impacts of criminalization’s surrounding sex work. Our priorities are building local, regional, and national leadership to constructively advocate sex workers’ human, health, labor, and civil rights. We commit ourselves to the tenets of human rights and base our foundations upon equity, equality, empowerment, and agency, to bring those voices into constructive and productive leadership roles in the sex worker rights movements and umbrella issues unique to sex workers. We advocate for the full anti-criminalization of sex work.
It is with great sadness and much consideration that Desiree Alliance announces the cancellation of any future conferences until it is safe for us to do so. Due to FOSTA/SESTA enactments, our leadership made the decision that we cannot put our attendees and our organization at risk. We hope you understand our grave concerns as we continue to resist every law that exists to harm sex workers! Keep fighting! Cris Sardina, Director – Desiree Alliance
IN THE NEWS:
Desiree Alliance submits to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: Call for input to the report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls to the Human Rights Council on prostitution and violence against women and girls UN Human Rights Council 56th session June 2024. Guidelines: OCHR Our response: Desiree Alliance
There is much misguided information by journalists and media used against sex workers and HIV. We would like to clear this up. Read our open letter here: Open Letter to the Media – Educate Yourselves! Educate Yourselves!
The Sex Worker Coalition writes to the United Nations International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination – CERD Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination UN CERD
Desiree Alliance and Best Practices Policy Project report on “Violence and its Impact on the Right to Health” Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights March 2022 Violence & Health
Good News! Since 2010, the efforts of Desiree Alliance and coalition members have a long-standing stake in the National HIV and AIDS strategy, demanding that sex workers are implemented in policy-making and overall healthcare for all sex workers. We did it! NHAS
https://hivgov-prod-v3.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/NHAS-2022-2025.pdf
Desiree Alliance, Black Sex Workers Collective, Outlaw Project, New Jersey Red Umbrella Alliance, and Best Practices Policy Project formed a coalition to respond to the United Nations Universal Periodic Review-UPR. The UPR is to respond to member-states (member countries) human rights records. 2020 is the United States review.
Report: UPR
To learn more about the UPR process visit: tinyurl.com/UPR2020info
UPDATE: The US has responded to the Universal Periodic Review accepting 280 out of 347 member state recommendations. The Desiree Alliance, Best Practices Policy Project, Black Sex Workers Collective, Outlaw Project, and New Jersey Red Umbrella Alliance have submitted a post-report to the US State Department
Press Release:
Contacts: N’JailaRhee:- [email protected], Penelope Saunders – [email protected], Cris Sardina – [email protected], Akynos – [email protected], Monica Jones – [email protected]
Sex Worker Rights Groups have told the United Nations how the U.S. violates human rights: here is how the US Government responded
Newark, NJ – April 27th, 2021 – This week our coalition of sex worker rights organizations is releasing a response to the United States response to the Third Cycle 36th Session Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the United Nations. The UPR is held every five years to hold member countries responsible for their human rights records and provides one of the only ways that our communities can shine a light on rights violations going on inside the U.S. In March the United States formally responded to 347 recommendations about human rights made by the international community, accepting 280 (whole and in part) of them.
“The current U.S. administration has the opportunity to take progressive measures in identifying how people labor, how people survive, and their lived realities,” says Cris Sardina of Desiree Alliance, adding that,“there should be nothing about us without us and the United States needs to consult with sex worker rights leadership to make the changes needed to make the accepted recommendations meaningful.”
“Black trans people in the United States are facing catastrophic levels of police brutality,” says Monica Jones, founder of the Arizona-based Outlaw Project. “We are pleased that member states of the UN have provided such clear recommendations regarding current policing practices targeting transgender people and that the U.S. accepted them. It is now time to make those recommendations matter by ending the violence experienced in our communities.”
“Ten years ago the U.S. accepted UPR Recommendation 86, requiring it to take action to address the vulnerability of sex workers and transgender people to violence and human rights abuses,” comments Penelope Saunders of the Best Practices Policy Project (BPPP). “We are gratified to see the U.S. accept new recommendations about police brutality targeting people of African descent, human rights abuses faced by transgender people, abuses of migrants, the impact of COVID-19, and gender based violence. However, these commitments will remain unfulfilled and Recommendation 86 will remain words on a page until the United States takes action.”
Previously in 2019, the Outlaw Project, Desiree Alliance, BPPP, the Black Sex Worker Collective, and New Jersey Red Umbrella Alliance submitted a shadow report to the United Nations about rights violations and then spent a year meeting with policy makers despite the barriers of the pandemics of COVID19 and anti-Black police violence.
To download a full copy of the 2021 response report pls visit: 2021 UPR
Desiree Alliance submits to The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination of Women – CEDAW on the General Recommendation on Trafficking in Women and Girls in the context of Global Migration (General discussion on TWGCGM) CEDAW submission Feb 2019
Update: CEDAW has responded to the 2019 recommendations. The Desiree Alliance, Black Sex Workers Collective, New Jersey Red Umbrella Alliance, Best Practices Policy Project, and the Outlaw Project respond to the overarching problematic and punitive language in their draft recommendations.
UN CEDAW
On June 22-23, 2018, Desiree Alliance hosted a national summit with sex workers across the US to create a national rights and principles document. The National Sex Worker Anti-Criminalization Principles outline a working template for the movement, advocating for people impacted by labor issues, social stigma, and criminalization. The movement condemns any attempts at restricting sex worker autonomy and self-determination. We encourage all sw organizations and individuals to use this document in every aspect of self-determinations in our movement.
NATIONAL SEX WORKER ANTI-CRIMINALIZATION PRINCIPLES
June 23, 2018
We offer up these principles to our movement as a working template for a national platform.
- General statement – We advocate for people impacted by labor issues, social stigma, and criminalization, and we condemn any attempts at restricting our autonomy and self-determination.
- Recommendations for all people –
- Support us in our struggle for justice and human rights and against those who would deny us access to the same services or rights because of our work.
- Respect us as the experts in our lives without assuming we are flawed in some way.
- We do not want punitive intervention.
- Recommendations for sex workers –
- We insist on sex worker leadership at every level of decision making on policies around sex work.
- We reserve to ourselves the rights to maintain our own health.
- We demand the right to speak, access all public channels of communication, to choose those who speak for us, and to be recognized by the media, public officials and others as the authorities on our own experience.
- Rights of sex workers –
- To make our own sexual and relationship choices without others invalidating our consent.
- To access social, medical, and justice services without discrimination in any form including but not limited to gender, sexuality, race, citizenship status, or the way we choose to work.
- To have our choices and bodily autonomy respected, including the right to decline services.
- To be free to work in a manner of our own choosing without onerous regulation that is disrespectful of our agency and autonomy.
Desiree Alliance featured Speaker at the 1st anniversary Women’s March January 21st 2018 Las Vegas, Nevada
Desiree Alliance makes history speaking for sex worker rights. The Women’s March recognizes sex work as work! Cris Sardina, director of Desiree Alliance, speaks of stigma, solidarity, and empowerment “I am a sex worker. And I have the right to be here”.