IGF 2019 WS #389
Sex work, drug use, harm reduction, and the internet

Relevance to Theme: The internet has immense potential for the previously marginalised in society. The internet has the potential to offer harm reducing and life saving information, as well as to unite kindred spirits, and provide avenues for people to seek help with problems that they may be to marginalised and stigmatised to find in the offline world. Drug users can find out information about the dangers of the drugs they use as well as strategies for harm reduction. Online forums also allow ex-drug abusers to find other ex-drug abusers or sympathetic people, even professionals to support eachother to stay clean. Sex workers can find information about safety, and many apps or social networks (whether for sex workers - like Switter - or not- like Facebook and Tinder) offer potential for sex workers to find clients while radically reducing the potential harms. Far less sex workers are killed as a result of internet-enabled transactions than from those negotiated on the street. The internet provides avenues as well for sex workers to find psychosocial support, find information about harm reduction, and find information to empower themselves to seek other avenues of employment. Children and women are most likely to be sexually or physically abused by members of their family or community leading to stigmatisation, exclusion and the marginalisation of their voices. The internet can be an avenue to learn about their problems, empower them to seek help, and connect them with possible people, communities and organisations that may support them. Internet regulations and the rules of social networks, like the laws of the offline world, are often been made by cisgender men and have often resulted in the exclusion of women, children, transgender people, people with mental health problems, and drug dependent people, further pushing them into the margins of society. The war on drugs, and the prohibition of sex work have not resulted in a safer world for drug users or sex workers nor resulted in any significant dent in drug use and sex work. Rather it often pushes them to the margins of society leaving them more vulnerable and exposed to harm.

Relevance to Internet Governance: Many discussions about internet governance, and internet governance initiatives have tried to solve societal ills by restricting and removing sexual content and drug-related content. Do these initiatives increase or reduce harms? Do they foster exclusion of the most vulnerable in society? What are the unintended consequences of these initiatives for vulnerable groups? The workshop also aims to make the IGF a more welcoming place for marginalised, stigmatised, and vulnerable groups in society.