The research was conducted by Public Assotiation “Ameliya” in 2015.
This report talks about sex work, violence and HIV infection in the
Republic of Kazakhstan. It presents the results of a research completed by the
community of Taldykorgan city and Almaty regions. This report describes daily
violence inflicted on sex workers by their clients or the police. It provides
evidence of the connection between violence and limited opportunities to protect
oneself from HIV.
The results of the research demonstrate how critical it is that this issue be
covered on a large scale, especially among decision makers in legislation. The
collected data points to the facts of violence that sex workers face in Kazakhstan,
to the cases of illegal HIV testing, arrests, blackmail, coercion to sexual
intercourse without consent, extortion of money and infliction of physical and
psychological damage to health.
This report also contains information on continuous police raids, even
though sex work is decriminalized in this country, hence the accompanying
documents are falsified since sex workers are required to pay fines for the crimes
that do not exist.
It also talks about sex workers’ fear to be identified by police or child
custody and guardianship authorities as doing sex work or using drugs, which
prevents them from using services, testing for HIV and using public health care
system.
Read the report in english here.