SEX WORK AND THE LAW - HIV/AIDS Data Hub

The local governments of Marikina City and Quezon City are supporting peer
education among sex workers.
The consultation recommended the following actions:
Involvement of establishment/bar owners and managers in developing appropriate
responses. In some sites, the bar owners and managers have the authority to impose
rules and regulations on HIV prevention and to ensure protection of sex workers
against abuses.
The Philippines
There should be continuous orientation and re-orientation on HIV prevention among
entertainers/ sex workers.
Ensure protection of sex workers against abuses from establishment/bar owners,
managers and clients.
Ensure access of sex workers to redress mechanisms.
In 2010, a bill was filed seeking the decriminalization of vagrancy/sex work. House Bill
1706 sought to provide sex workers with entitlements to medical services, counselling,
and legal protection services. 531
In 2011, a research project on Making our Strategy Right for Sex Workers in the Philippines,
conducted by the Social Science and Philosophy Research Foundation with funding
from UNFPA, made recommendations on legal and health issues, based on extensive
consultations with sex workers and other stakeholders. The project recommended
decriminalization of vagrancy, and work with law enforcement agencies as follows:
…dialogues must be conducted with local law enforcers on how to develop
intervention programs for freelance sex workers that will not be jeopardized by police
operations. This is a sensitive issue and will need to be also threshed out thoroughly
with local government officials. More importantly, the police should be apprised of
the new ordinances on HIV prevention in cities where such ordinances have been
passed…The experience of cities that have started this type of dialogue can be
documented and serve as a model, e.g., Quezon City. 532
The NGO Action for Health Initiatives (ACHIEVE) provides legal support to people living
with HIV and sex workers, and advocates for sex workers rights. 533 ACHIEVE conducted
an assessment of the application of anti-trafficking and anti-vagrancy laws as a hindrance
to HIV responses among sex workers, and have worked with sex worker communities in
Quezon City and Pasay City in addressing these issues with the police.
The AIDS Surveillance and Education Project (ASEP) sponsored a study that identified
local laws and practices that hindered HIV prevention efforts, including: 534
local ordinances that limited Social Hygiene Clinic services to registered female
‘entertainers,’ excluding freelance and underage sex workers; and
531 Romero P. (2010) Lawmaker wants to decriminalize prostitution, Philippine Star, 16 December 2010.
532 Natividad J., Trinidad A., Billedo C., Templonuevo J., (2011) op cit., p.80.
533 ACHIEVE (2011) Positive Justice Utilization of People Living with HIV in the Philippines AIDS Prevention
and Control Act of 1998 (RA8504), ACHIEVE.
534 ASEP was implemented by Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), WHO and the
Philippines Department of Health, See: Aquino C., D’Agnes L., Castro, J., et al. (2003) op cit, p.26.
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