Implementing Comprehensive HIV/STI Programmes with Sex Workers Implementing Comprehensive HIV/STI Programmes with | Page 26

1 Community Empowerment

1.1 Introduction

2012 Recommendations:1 Evidence-based Recommendation 1

In the context of sex work and HIV programming, community empowerment is a process whereby
sex workers take individual and collective ownership of programmes in order to achieve the most
effective HIV responses, and take concrete action to address social and structural barriers to their
broader health and human rights.2
The interventions delivered through a community empowerment model include sustained engagement
with local sex workers to raise awareness about sex worker rights, the establishment of communityled safe spaces (drop-in centres),3 the formation of collectives that determine the range of services
to be provided, as well as outreach and advocacy.
The 2012 Recommendations state that community empowerment is a necessary component of sex
worker interventions and should be led by sex workers. The benefits are high, there are no harms and
the required resources are relatively low. The values and preferences survey4 found that sex workers
see community empowerment as an “absolutely necessary component” of health interventions for
improving their living and working conditions, developing strategies for health and rights interventions,
and redressing human rights violations.
Sex workers take charge of the community empowerment process by mobilizing with other sex
workers to develop solutions to the issues they face as a group, and by advocating for their rights
as sex workers and as human beings.
Community empowerment is also a broader social movement that supports the self-determination
of sex workers. It requires governmental, nongovernmental, public, private, political and religious
institutions and organizations to address and remove the social exclusion, stigma, discrimination
and violence that violate the human rights of sex workers and heighten associated HIV risk and
vulnerability.
Community empowerment includes working towards the decriminalization of sex work and the
elimination of the unjust application of non-criminal laws and regulations against sex workers, and
recognizing and respecting sex work as a legitimate occupation or livelihood.
Investing in community empowerment is not only the right thing to do but makes good sense.
Female, male and transgender sex workers are disproportionately affected by HIV. Strategies for
1 Prevention and treatment of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections for sex workers in low- and middle-income countries: recommendations for a public health approach.
WHO, UNFPA, UNAIDS, NSWP, 2012.
2 In most contexts in this tool, “community” refers to populations of sex workers rather than the broader geographic, social or cultural groupings of which they may
be a part. Thus, “outreach to the community” means outreach to sex workers, “community-led interventions” are interventions led by sex workers, and “community
members” are sex workers.
3 A safe space or drop-in centre is a place where sex workers may gather to relax, meet other community members and hold social events, meetings or training.
See Chapter 3, Section 3.3 for details.
4 A global consultation conducted with sex workers by NSWP as part of the process of developing the 2012 Recommendations.

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