As 22 sex workers representing fellow workers from different parts of Bangladesh each lit a candle, strong voices rose in unison singing "We shall overcome some day". Thus began the first-ever national conference of sex workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Around 200 sex workers, including eight guests from Kolkata, India, made the quiet venue near the Bangladeshi capital lively for two days last month, singing and dancing in between sessions of sharing problems and voicing concerns.

At the end of the meeting, the sex workers formed the Sex Workers' Network of Bangladesh, saying they needed to work together to mobilise public opinion in support of favourable legislative changes and above all, to gain proper recognition of their profession.

''We sex workers are denied all fundamental rights and are oppressed by the state and the society;'' says Shahnaz, one of the four convenors of the conference.

''You who pursue different professions have social recognition, and enjoy all the rights and the protection by the state and the society. We want our trade to be legalised so that we too can get our fundamental rights as the citizens of this country,'' she argues.

The slogan of the conference was Gotor khatie khai, peshar odhikar chai . ("We earn our livelihoods by hard toil and want rights for our profession").

''We of course want to ensure that children or anyone against her will do not take up the profession;'' adds Shahnaz. 'But those of us already in profession want to carry on peacefully. Of us about half had been forced into prostitution, while the other half was driven to it mainly by poverty.''

Ankhi, a leader of the Narimukti Songho (the Women's Emancipation Association) from a district-town brothel, says: 'We will eventually realise legal rights for our profession. Right now those in the police and other administrations find various means of oppressing us and no one can check them.''

Legal ambiguity

The legality of sex work in Bangladesh is actually ambiguous, according to the concept paper of the conference, organised by four associations of sex workers, one of them of transgender people.

The meeting was supported by NGOs like CARE, Concern, Action AID, Oxfam, the women's rights group Naripokhho and the legal aid NGO Ain-O-Salish Kendra.

Bangladesh's Constitution says that the state shall take effective measures to stop prostitution. But a woman gains the right to sell sex by an affidavit in a court of law certifying that she is at least 18 years of age and takes up the work out of her own free will.

In fact, the process is regularly misused by syndicates, including police-led cliques, to force children into sex work. Prostitution in brothels is allowed, but sex work elsewhere is termed illegal. Likewise, activists say all sorts of ambiguous laws exist.

One of the sessions looked into the validity and morality of sex work as a profession, a subject that is quite controversial not just in Bangladeshh, but in other Asian and developing countries and even among women's activists groups.

In the end, the conclusion of the group '' concedes Hossain Shahid Suman of Concern Bangladesh, an NGO involved in helping the sex workers, ''but that debate becomes irrelevant because thousands survive by providing this service.''

''What is relevant and urgent is to recognise this profession and ensure the human rights of those engaged in sex work,'' she points out.

'Rehabilitation drive'

Many stressed that the legal ambiguity in Bangladesh has first to be cleared, because this allows the criminalisation of the trade and facilitates violence against and financial and other forms of exploitation of the women.

Official statistics record that nearly 4,000 women are engaged in prostitution in over a dozen registered brothels in Bangladesh. But besides this, thousands more are engaged in prostitution in nearly all the urban areas and commercial centres of the country.

In Dhaka alone, some 5,000 women live by selling sex in the streets. The closure of brothels — often triggered by clashes of interests over control of the lucrative business — by the community's religious and other leaders continue to increase the number of street-based sex workers.

Najma was evicted in 1999, when the government closed down the then largest brothel of Bangladesh in the name of rehabilitating the women.

''I do not have any shelter now,'' says Najma, ''and I cannot get any other job and have to live by sex work amid the uncertainties and tortures in the street.''

''We all know what a fiasco the said rehabilitation drive was. I have to raise my two children. I want security and protection from violence so that I can pursue the only means of livelihood open to me,'' she says.

Demands of the profession

Hazera, president of Dhaka's street-based sex workers' organisation Durjoy nari Shongho (The Invincible Women's Association) says: 'We have no place in a society that pushes us into prostitution and then leaves us no way out.''

''We do not get any treatment when we are ill. Our children cannot go to school... the police and the goons, the powerful, grab our hard-earned money and torture us. Our Constitution says all citizens are equal but is this equality?''

Several demands were voiced during the conference. These included the right to participate in the planning and implementation of programmes for the welfare of sex workers, and to put mother's name as the guardian while registering the birth of a child.

Demands relating to discrimination due to the mother's sex work — equal rights for their children and sex workers' proper burial/cremation after death — were also aired.

The sex workers also expressed their commitment to stop child prostitution.

In the end, say activists, changing society's attitude and empowering sex workers are key to improving the lot of those who say that few options are open to them apart from the sex industry.

''To ease their plight, the social attitude that ostracises sex workers must change. The law must change,'' says Gemini Wahhaj of CARE Bangladesh. ''If the sex workers are united, they can raise their own demands and the drive can be helped by their organised voices.'' — IPS