"You need to call out all your people" 🗣 Anke Houtzammer, Human Rights Specialist, on our first #Amaqhawekazi webinar about young key populations. Watch the full webinar here: #Youth #KeyPopulations #HarmReduction

Considerations: shift from punitive to health-centred approach, and building public health systems. We need more conversations like this one which are more intersectoral, to ask why is criminalisation still used? #DecrimNow.

Across the continent, there is a movement to decriminalise poverty - to do away with colonial era laws that target people of poorer socio-economic classes like "loitering" laws.

"We have to include all level of players, centring people with the lived experience"

Nabeelah Mia from @LHR_SA looking at the legal drivers for #decrim of sex work and personal drug use in South Africa.

Where are we now? Public submissions led to Bill being rejected. @Sisonke_ZA and others have been lobbying the government to re-start the process towards #decrim of sex work.

Zintle provides the example of New Zealand, where sex workers were involved at every step of the process of decriminalisation.

Full decriminalisation is the only human rights based approach. This means decriminalising buying AND selling sex as well as brothel-keeping with existing laws used to regulate the industry.

Effects of criminalisation include: no protection, reduced access to healthcare, vulnerability to violence, disempowerment and exploitation.

Zintle outlines the journey towards the decriminalisation of sex work in South Africa. It is a fascinating history: when same sex and inter-racial relationships were decriminalised after the arrival of democracy, sex work remained criminalised!.

"If I get raped, I can't open a case because of discrimination and stigma" - says a sex worker interviewed in the video.

Zintle Tsholwana from @SisonkeSA is up next to talk about decriminalisation of sex work. First, we're watching this video about the harmful impact of criminalisation on sex workers:

Key challenge is municipal by-laws and administrative sanctions put in place in conflict with constitutional amendments to decriminalise.

The country has shown some positive public health improvements but there have also been challenges with successive governments trying to push back. #HarmReduction.

Columbia is a good example for South Africa on #decrim - as a global south country with similar socio-economic issues. They shifted away from 'the war on drugs' to holistic support for individuals - Charity Monareng from @ssdpofficial.

There have been many attempts to recriminalise, including administrative fines for personal drug use possession.

Constitutional court ruling which used the concept of the "personal dose" - difference between a person doing illicit activity and drugs for personal use. Problem of thresholds and how this is policed.

Criminalisation pushes people like sex workers and people who use drugs underground and away from testing and treatment options and negatively impacts public health - @AndrewsYolaan, NACOSA's Key Populations Manager.

#Amaqhawekazi Harm Reduction webinar on #decrim of sex work and drugs for personal use about to start! Join us @SisonkeSA, @lhr_sa, @ssdpofficial and @dejusticia or follow along on X.

RT @Sisonke_ZA: Come & gain rare insights from leading human rights amaqhawekazi at the heart of reform efforts while you learn how decrimi….