ID: HR19-245
Presenting author: Isabel Soares
Isabel Soares, Mariana Melo, Nilza Almeida, Rita Neto, Helena Carvalho
Trans and gender-nonconforming people still face significant discrimination on systemic, interpersonal and institutional levels (Nadal, 2014). Within trans community, the group of trans sex workers (TSW) live in an “intersection of whorephobia and transphobia” (NSWP, 2014, p.2) being particularly vulnerable to social and public health harms and exposed to violence. Even though, there’s little understanding of the issues that TSW face (TGEU, 2015; ICRSE, 2015; WHO, 2015) and their needs are often not specifically nor sufficiently used to inform the design comprehensive approaches (ILO, 2014).
The European project TransR – Trans Sex Workers Rights are Human Rights, which main goal is to contribute to the fulfilment, respect and protection of the fundamental rights of TSW, intends to reduce this knowledge gap. Based upon participatory methodologies, partners from 5 EU countries (APDES – Portugal; Hetaira – Spain; Lefö – Austria; MIT – Italy; Positive Voice – Greece) were involved in the needs assessment, collecting relevant information directly with and by TSW, mainly during outreach work. A desktop research also took place to understand the state of art of TSW needs and the best practices to address them. Results from these methods were returned to interested parties, but also to other stakeholders with a prominent role in TSW lives in two focus groups per country. Information collected in all these moments will later increase informed and effective interventions for and with TSW.