ADVOCACY

Advocacy is an important strategy what DMSC has undertaken since its inception. Over the period DMSC has developed a separate cell on advocacy and liaison to achieve its mission and to fulfill its goal.DMSC created a dedicated advocacy team to carry out all activities related to advocacy and liaison.

DMSC used combination of strategies which includes advocacy, media mobilization and social activism in tandem to address issues of all kinds of violence and discriminatory practices e.g. eviction of sex workers from their place of residence by local pimps, harassment by police and local goons, violence from the intimate partners among others.

Primary objectives of DMSC’s advocacy program:

1.To ensure basic rights and access to various social entitlements to sex workers and other marginalized communities.

2.To advocate and sensitize administrators and policy makers to address socially imposed stigma and discriminatory practices perpetrated by a section of office bearers, service providers and others.

3.To decriminalize sex work and workers as well as the sex work environment.

4.To ensure government recognition of SRB as an autonomous board to combat violence and trafficking in sex trade.

Major activities

Advocacy and lobbying is an important strategy adopted by DMSC to influence the mindset of the policy makers and people alike. We carry out advocacy both at local, state, national as well as at international levels to influence policies and programs linked to sex work and workers. We generally use number of strategies which includes advocacy, negotiation, media mobilization and social activism depending on the effectiveness of the strategies related to varied kinds of issues and challenges. DMSC engages with police and administration to minimize unnecessary police raids, harassments and extortion of money by a section of police officerswho often belongs to the lower rungs in the hierarchy.

As sex workers are hardly able to access judicial redressal mechanisms, DMSC took the initiative to build liaison with the judiciary support system meant for poorer section e.g. NALSA, DALSA at State and District level. DMSC also work in partnership with professional NGOs who deal with laws and policies. Another area of activity is to advocate with the local councilor, MLAs, MPs and Ministers, who are the elected representatives of citizens. We often start our action with lower level police officers which includes the staff members of the local Police Station, followed by higher level officers e.g. Commissioner, D.G., I.G., and others. DMSC’s advocacy program also includes liaison with media, politicians and with political parties, NGOs, intellectuals among others.

Advocacy with policy makers

The advocacy team of DMSC reach out to the policy makers e.g. MPs, MLAs, Ministers, Political leaders,DMs, academicians, intellectuals etc.regularly and tried to make them understand sex worker’s life and livelihood related issues. Firstly, we identify decision-makers who are sympathetic to our views and issues and who are willing to lend their support. To begin with, no one showed any interest to listen to us. However,we never get disappointed but made frequent visits to theiroffices.Slowly and steadily we succeeded in influencing their attitude toward sex workers. We provided relevant information related to human rights abusesby police and others.

Durbar’s advocacy work is also focused to influence lawmakers. Major activities are:

Meeting with the parliamentarians

Meeting with the aspiring candidates to get elected in the parliament prior to election

Arranging field visits for policymakers, academicians, program managers and others

Advocacy with police

The current legal framework forces sex workers to live at the margins of the society. They are the easy targets for abuse at the hands of police and local goons. Survey conducted among sex workers in red light district shows that major perpetrators are the police; almost all sex workers reported experiencing some form of violence from members of police department. Sex workers do not view the police as the‘protector’ rather perpetrators of abuses. Examples of police brutality experienced by sex workers includes murder and attempted murder, rape, gang rape, violence, arrests, disrespectful attitude towards sex workers and varied kinds of harassment.
Sex workers because of their social status often face violence perpetrated by various agencies. To document violence on sex workers, DMSC first conducted a study in 2010 in 16 red light districts in Kolkata among 11394 sex workers.

Result of the study:

It was found that violence on sex workers were the manifestations of stigma and discrimination experienced by the community.

Violence perpetuated on sex workers were mainly due to three reasons:

Illiteracy among sex workers and low self-esteem make the sex workers vulnerable and thus the violence remains unreported.
Social system and moral stigma enhances the chance of violence and discriminatory practices towards the sex workers.
Legal environment of the country put sex work in the twilight of legality and illegality.

These factors create a power imbalance leading to various kind of violence by various agencies.

The number of cases of violence reported was as high as 76170. The study focused to document sex worker’s feelings on violence. It revealed that sex workers face various kinds of violence including physical abuse, verbal abuse, threatening, extortion for money and stigma and discrimination.

These manifestations of stigma and discrimination are of different kinds which are as follows:

Physical exploitation including Rape, beating and other physical abuse

Psychological abuse including verbal abuse, psychosocial pressure, threatening etc.

Exploitation by the legal enforcement agencies which primarily includes Police harassment, police raids, police arrest in false cases etc.

Extortion of money including demanding subscription, bribes etc.

Discriminatory practices by the society at large by depriving the sex workers in availing various social entitlements and their rights.

They expressed that police harassment is a typical violence perpetrated by the state appointed authority. The study revealed, Police using its power and authority to abuse sex workers and is responsible for 31.14% of the total violence on sex workers. Other perpetrators of violence are the local hooligans in and around the red light district who extort money, threatens sex workers with consequences. Even the Malkins and House Owners often indulge in violence on the sex workers. Babu (lovers) of the sex workers are responsible for heighten number of incidence of violence on sex workers and their children. The family of the sex workers often uses social and political clout to get property of sex workers.

It was found that, among the incidences of physical violence, primarily beating was 89.18%. Incidences of rape were 8.1% and only 1 case of murder had taken place. There were incidences of serious beating in two cases. Another case of exceptional beating was burn by candle. Psychological violence was primarily by verbal abuse (84%) and violence by creating psychosocial pressure was also seen (16%). Police mainly perpetrate violence by arresting the sex workers and their customers and harassing the sex workers. Police raids were also very much common. With regards to the above challenges, we recognized the need to strengthen our advocacy work with the staff members of the local police stations followed by higher level officers e.g. Commissioners, DGs, OCs etc. what helped to minimize unnecessary police raids, harassment and extortion of money by a section of police officers.

Advocacy with media

The media can be a strong ally for publicizing rights violations of sex workers. The main objective of media advocacy is to provoke questions in the minds of commoner. And it’s about getting thestories related to incidence of violence, responses from sex workers, etc. what goes to the press that is read, watched, by the decision-makers also. The prime objective is to get our point-of-view highlighted in the media that exposes challenges a sex worker face in her day to day practices. DMSC’s strong relationshipwith journalists, editors, etc. helped in publishing news articles etc.both in printing and digital media.

The advocacy team of DMSC regularly communicates with field level journalists, senior journalists, and editorswith a view to protect community’s interest and to expose varied kinds of exploitative practices of numbers of stakeholders. DMSCis conscious regarding protection of complainants from further victimization. DMSC also organizes seminars, workshops, meetings with media personnel in order to communicate news, case studies etc. in a way that accurately reflect the realities of sex workers’ lives.

Advocacy with “local stakeholders"

Local stakeholders have lot of influence on sex workers’ life and their occupation, which includes landlord/landladies, madams, pimps, shop owners, local club members, and members of local political parties and other influential persons who live in the vicinity of red light areas. It has been witnessed that the sex workers are systematically harassed by local clubs who demand excessive subscription for pujasor other festivals.Landlords often unreasonably evict them from their rented houses. In additionto that abusive behavior by their babus, or lover is a pretty common.When such kind of incident happens and the situation goes against the interest of the sex workers and their children, DMSC took all efforts to negotiate with relevant stake-holders to solve the problem.

Our achievements:

As a result of 25 years of advocacy, DMSC is now in a position to register their voices both at State as well as National level. DMSC has made successful interventions to prevent criminalization of clients proposed by the Ministry of Women and Child Development during the year 2006.

Durbar representative functioned as a panel member of a committee constituted by the Supreme Court of India to deal with issues of sex workers under three broad headlines:

1. To suggest how trafficking in sex work could be minimized
2. To recommend ways to develop an appropriate rehabilitation program for those who want to leave sex work
3. To suggest how to protect the dignity of sex workers who wants to continue in sex work.

In the year 2013, 33 Parliamentarians’ showed overwhelming support in favor of sex workers who collectively sent a letter to Smt. Krishna Tirath, Minister in Charge of Women and Child Development requesting her to make necessary amendments to the ITPA so as to restore the rights and dignity of sex workers.
During National election (2014) DMSC reached out to 423 aspirant candidate who were competing to get elected in the parliament out of which 258 of them(61%) put their signature in support of the DMSC’s three core demand namely:

1. Removal of relevant clauses from the ITPA act what directly or indirectly criminalize sex workers.
2. Inclusion of sex work in the labor schedule maintained by the Ministry of Labor, Government of India.
3. To get full recognition of SRB as a valid forum to deal with all kinds ofviolence, including trafficking in sex work.