10.11.2008

100TV, Russia

St Petersburg - Irina Maslova of "Humanitarian Action", one of SWAN members in Russia, took part in public discussion on prostitution on Russia. A 65 min long TV discussion, where to a question "Do you consider prostitution a kind of profession?" 4299 of viewers voted YES and 4294 voted NO. More

Representatives of two organizations, members of SWAN Network, participated at the Mexico conference: Irina Maslova from Humanitarian Action in Russia and Gulnara Kurmanova from Tais Plus in Kyrgyzstan. Here is a short report on the conference, written by Irina exclusively for the SWAN News. More

In the previous issue of the SWAN News we exchanged experiences and provided tips for opening low-threshold drop-in centers for sex workers. The topic raised significant interest among our readers who contacted both the SWAN News and our Macedonian partner who provided the tips. We decided to continue this topic by presenting one such center that recently opened in Murmansk, in the Russian Federation.

More: Girls from Sverdlov Street

Humanitarian Action, SWAN member from Russia has recently posted two short video films on You Tube. One is about regular police raids against brothels and the other about the campaign Humantiarian Action organized in Sankt Petersburg on December 17 last year. More

December 3, 2007 – Most of people in Russia don‘t denounce sex workers and their clients. A bit less than a half of Russia’s population – mostly women – consider this ancient profession humiliating. But about 40% of respondents – mostly men – do not see anything scandalous about it. Such are the results of a poll published by foundation "Public Opinion", Novie Izvestia report. More

The head of Siberian Initiative board, Veniamin Volnov and its Program Director, Alexey Starostenko, took part in all-Russia motor rally “STOP AIDS” («СТОП СПИД»)  More

“I really couldn’t and didn’t want to keep silent any more. I stood up and spoke up. I revealed my sex worker status and explained why we need support, how we can help the state and why our voice should be heard.” More

“Crisis Apartment”, a temporary refuge for pregnant women and mothers with infants, was officially opened in St-Petersburg in June 2007. It had been working unofficially since April and had already had several clients. More

Final report on the implementation of the project “Complex measures on HIV prevention among individuals, providing sex services for money” was published in the framework of “National Health Project Priorities” in Russia. This project took place in 2006 in 10 regions of Russia.

Public foundation “Humanitarian Action”, SWAN member from St-Petersburg in Russia, gave a training on AIDS prevention to injecting drug users and people providing sex services for money in the Center of Public Associations in Chelyabinsk. 98 % of St-Petersburg sex workers are drug users. 24.6 % of them are HIV positive, 6.6% infected with syphilis.