Still underground: searching for progress in realizing the human rights of women in prostitution.

Production of the HIV/AIDS Policy & Law Review has been made possible, in part, by funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada under the Canadian Strategy on HIV/AIDS.The financial contribution of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS toward the publication of this issue is gratefully acknowledged. After more than 20 years of global consensus on the need to work respectfully with sex trade workers as a central anti-HIV/AIDS strategy, the abuse and demonization of women and others in sex work remain major impediments to progress in both defending human rights and fighting AIDS. In this article, Joanne Csete and Meena Saraswathi Seshu discuss the nature of human rights abuses faced by women in prostitution and describe impediments to reducing those abuses.The authors suggest measures that would help to advance the human rights of women in prostitution and to create an environment conducive to the realization of their crucial role in combating HIV/AIDS.