Silver Rose is a sex worker-led organisation and member of NSWP, representing sex workers and their allies. They bring together the leaders of the sex work community and their supporters. Sex workers are frequently detained under Article 6. During the celebration of the th anniversary of St. Petersburg in May , the police raided brothels. The police booked fake appointments with sex workers pretending to be clients. The police then drove the street-based sex workers km away from the center and left them there.
Raids against sex workers are carried out on a daily basis in Russia. On the eve of some important events, especially international ones, the police intensify raids in order to remove sex workers from the city.
And I understood that this system, when you owe to everyone, should be changed. No organisation could provide us the legal advice at that time. Since then the peer-to-peer support group has gathered every Saturday to discuss and share problems and legal issues arising from the raids. The group operated until , when the Global Fund came to Russia and funded and implemented harm reduction programmes.
Within the programmes of the Global Fund the preventive programmes for sex workers were implemented. Those programmes were about HIV prevention. Non-governmental workers were doing outreach to street-based sex workers.
They distributed condoms and explained how to sex workers should protect themselves. In , a training on HIV prevention among sex workers was held in Russia for the first time. The training was organised by Global Fund and many large and important organisations participated. Nineteen sex workers attended the training as well as non-governmental organisation NGO representatives and doctors. Sex workers were not included in the development of the training. There were separate sessions for sex workers, NGO representatives and doctors.
