Thursday, 01 December 2011 00:00

At its 25th Board Meeting in Ghana, 20-22 November, 2011, the Global Fund Board decided to cancel Round 11, its funding opportunity for countries to put forward ambitious proposals for scale-up of HIV/AIDS, TB and/or malaria programs, National Strategies and health systems strengthening. The reason for this is lack ofmoney and unwillingness by the donors to invest more in AIDS, TB and malaria through the Global Fund. The immediate consequence is that countries will only be able to apply for funding for continuation of essential prevention, treatment and/or care programs currently financed by the Global Fund that will otherwise face disruption between January 2012 and 31 March 2014. Funding for new programs and scale-up would only come available again as of 2014. This happens at a time when the Global Fund Board also approved a new Strategy 2012-2016 with ambitious targets – that could fundamentally change the course of the epidemics.

Saturday, 05 November 2011 00:00 ICRSE Coordinator

Recently in Bulgaria sex workers have taken the first tentative steps to mobilising for their rights.

On 29 August plans were put into place for a demonstration in response to recent police activity that has focused on arresting and detaining sex workers working along the main ring road around Sofia. Charges related to immoral behavior and/or causing traffic accidents are being used in what could be described as an attempt to rid Sofia of prostitutes. However, the demonstration did not take place as planned. Although around 20 sex workers showed up there were so many journalists taking photographs that most of the women became nervous and left.

Some news clippings in Bulgarian:

• http://www.dnes.bg
• http://dariknews.bg
• http://bnt.bghttp://tv7.bg

Briefly it is said in these videos that sex workers in Sofia organize a protest against the police activity because recently all outdoor sex workers were detained by the police for 24 hours and were not able to do sex work. They want their profession to be legalized, to pay taxes and to be able to work undisturbed. These are mostly independent sex workers who have no pimps and work for themselves.

Update:

On 25th of October an NGO "Risk Monitor" released a Report called "Legalizing prostitution - Pros and Cons" and a press conference was held to present the report and its main conclusions.

Update:

On 1st of November 3 sex workers gathered and gave a press-conference called "There must be a law about prostitution in Bulgaria". Two of them participated live, another one was present via Skype. A news article in bulgarian can be found here.

Video news reports from the press conference

• http://kanal3.bg
• http://www.btv.bg - national news
• http://bnt.bg - national news

Rayna Dimitrova a member of Hesed Bulgaria was at the press conference had the following important observations: Reni, one of the sex workers willing to speak publicly has come forward along with 2 other colleagues to fight for the visibility and rights of the group, new language was introduced at the press conference using the term 'sex worker' instead of 'prostitutes, whores etc' and the journalists acted and interviewed politely and with respect and adopted the term 'sex worker' immediately!

Efforts are starting to establish a sex worker led association what will advocate for the rights of sex workers in Bulgaria.