Authored by Fundación Huésped’s Advocacy and Implementation Research teams
Within the SPHERE project in Argentina, aimed at documenting and strengthening social participation in health among trans people and sex workers, Fundación Huésped held a second witness seminar in April 2024 on the unionization of sex work and its impact on the right to health.
This meeting was built on the first witness seminar held in December 2023 on the Gender Identity Law and its impact on the health of the trans community. The first witness seminar was focused on a historic achievement and the collective processes that expanded rights, held in an electoral context in which the possible election of a new government generated significant concern within the LGBT+ community, due to its openly discriminatory rhetoric and the perceived threat of rolling back established legal protections. However, unlike the first one, this second witness seminar took place in a profoundly different political landscape, shaped by the inauguration of a new government characterized by a conservative shift in public discourse, growing polarization, and increased challenges for LGBT+ rights. The scenario was marked by state-reduction policies and the weakening of social protection mechanisms, measures that have had harmful consequences for historically discriminated and stigmatized groups facing economic and social vulnerability.
This second witness seminar brought together 16 activists from AMMAR -the sex workers’ union in Argentina- with representatives from various provinces across the country, including Georgina Orellano, its General Secretary. It also featured the participation of Hugo Yasky, Secretary General of the Confederation of Workers of Argentina (CTA, English acronym), a key organization in advancing the recognition of sex workers as subjects of labor rights. From a perspective that recognizes unionization as a form of collective and political organization, this witness seminar enabled reflection on how social participation shapes health decision-making processes and contributes to the development of more inclusive universal health coverage (UHC) policies.
In a sociopolitical context of setbacks and threats to hard-won rights, the seminar became a key space for collective memory, critical analysis, and strategic projection, where sex workers revisited past achievements, identified emerging challenges, and discussed ways to strengthen the linkage between labor rights, comprehensive health, and community participation.
The SPHERE project’s witness seminars are not isolated events: their outcomes are translated into concrete inputs for policy advocacy, the development of situated knowledge, and the organizational strengthening of the communities themselves. Building on these processes and on previous studies, we are producing evidence-based reports requested by the communities themselves. These reports focus on institutional violence against sex workers, and its impact on mental health and access to health care, enabling community members to use them as tools for advocacy, visibility and political influence.As with the process that led to the documentary Nothing But Equality, this second witness seminar reaffirms a core conviction of our work: rights are guaranteed with and from the communities. It is not only about listening to testimonies, but about creating spaces where participants are recognized as protagonists of change, and where their knowledge, trajectories, and demands guide public policies and health responses.
