NUM statement on the death of a sex worker in Limerick
6 April 2023
We are exceptionally sad to hear of the death of a Geila Ibram, young migrant woman working as a sex worker in Limerick yesterday.
Losing a member of the sex work community is always painful, whether we knew them personally or not. The pain is compounded knowing that so many of these deaths are caused not just by individual perpetrators of violence, but states and systems that enforce laws and polices which allows this violence to flourish.
We echo the frustration expressed by SWAI about the legislation that criminalised sex workers, excludes them from social and legal protections, increasing their susceptibility to predatory and situational violence. Economic conditions push women, migrants and others into desperate situations, with few options to feed themselves.
Violence against sex workers is not inevitable. It is not an occupational hazard. Violence against sex workers exists because of power, stigma, discrimination and exclusion. It exists because sex workers are routinely denied control over their lives and working practices. It exists because safety is criminalised. It exists because sex worker voices are ignored, dismissed and ridiculed. It exists because so many sex workers experience marginalisation in other ways outside of their sex working identity, whether this is due to their race, gender, sexuality, migration status, class, health status or trans identity. Intersecting vulnerabilities compound violence, placing more and more people at risk, as people are treated as society’s disposables.
Sex workers in Ireland have spoken out for years about how client criminalisation policies harm them. Amnesty International published a report last year detailing the harms they have experienced under this law, passed in 2017, criminalising the purchase of sex. This model has lead to the deaths of sex workers across the world. Under these laws, clients are empowered, sex workers displaced, safety practices criminalised and support non-existent. Sex workers are evicted from their homes, fired from their jobs, harassed by the police and deported against their will. This is not what safety looks like.
“I must be some person”, a report looking at the experiences of street sex workers in Dublin and Limerick under these laws, details the systemic violence that sex workers face from clients, communities, law enforcement and the state. Not only are sex workers at increased risk of harm, but they are unable to achieve justice, safety or support when they do experience this. Violence does not just look like assault, sexual harms or death – it is also experienced as being turned away from the police station or hospital when you try to report it and get help. It is being left in poverty by state policies, evictions, poor healthcare, family exclusion, removals of children – and having little access to support.
How many more deaths will it take before sex workers are heard?
How many more victims must suffer harm and violence before the laws that cause this violence are repealed?
How many more bodies must we bury, friends must we mourn, candles must we light at our remembrance days, before action is taken to end preventable homicides?
Sex workers and the groups that support them demand justice, autonomy and safety. They deserve life, liberty and security.
This is not too much to ask.
It is time to direct support to community members experiencing the cruelty of poverty and predation from dangerous individuals who target vulnerability. It is time to end the wars on sex workers. We join SWAI and UglyMugs.ie in their call for increased investment in sex worker-led interventions, and to prioritise safety.
Our thoughts are with Geila’s family and friends . May she rest in power.
If you are a sex worker and would like to access support, please contact NUM’s casework team, Sex Workers’ Alliance Ireland or UglyMugsIe.
This statement was updated on 11th April 2023 following Geila Ibram’s name becoming publicly known.