Policy

Ruth Morgan Thomas (she/her) has been involved in sex work for 40 years — as a fulltime sex worker, as an academic researcher looking at HIV related risks in the sex industry and as a sex workers’ rights advocate campaigning for, developing and maintaining services and support for sex workers within a human rights and labour framework. Ruth was one of the founding members of the Scottish Prostitutes Education Project estabished in 1989 by sex workers for sex workers in Edinburgh, which she managed for 20 years.

In 2004, Ruth joined with other sex workers and allies across Europe to organize the European Conference on Sex Work, Human Rights, Labour and Migration and was chair of the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe until 2010. She was a founding member of the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), which formed in 1992, and has been employed as their Global Coordinator since 2010. She currently co-chairs the UNAIDS Steering Committee on HIV and Sex Work on behalf of the NSWP, and represents NSWP in the recently formed Sex Worker Inclusive Feminist Alliance. In 2012, Ruth coordinated the Sex Worker Freedom Festival — the alternative IAC2012 event for sex workers and their allies in protest at the legal travel restrictions imposed upon sex workers by the US government — and is a member of the Core Group organising HIV2020 online.