Sex workers face a wide range of human rights abuses around the world. Tactical Tech is working with this community to help them connect with each other to defend their rights.

Sex workers have a legitimate fear of coming above ground to access mainstream health and legal protection services because of the discrimination they experience. This discrimination often occurs as a result of the laws, policies and practices of governments and other state actors.

Sex worker advocates are working hard to gain protection and promote health for sex workers. But they face many challenges: such as local raid and rescue and 100% condom use initiatives that are used to entrap and prosecute sex workers.

International funding initiatives, like the United State's Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and its anti-prostitution pledge threaten the well-being of thousands of sex workers around the globe.

In April 2007, Tactical Tech led a series of technology workshops at a global gathering of sex worker health and rights advocates in Cambodia. Working in collaboration with an experienced advocate and technologist, Melissa Gira, Tactical Tech also undertook a needs assessment of the communities current technology practices and needs.

Tactical Tech is working with sex worker health and rights advocates helping them use ICT for advocacy at both grass roots and international levels by:

• Building ICT expertise among sex worker advocates to enable peer-to-peer capacity building
• Exploring how mobile phones could be used for street outreach work
• Investigating how online knowledge sharing systems, such as wikis can be used to share strategies and campaigns with the global movement of sex worker advocates
• Identifying consultants to work with sex-worker advocates in rapid response campaigns
• Developing ways in which ICTs can be used to facilitate global advocacy strategies