Implementing Comprehensive HIV/STI Programmes with Sex Workers Implementing Comprehensive HIV/STI Programmes with | Page 34

1 Community Empowerment The strength of the collective and the partnerships that have been built are crucial to promoting a human-rights framework. Challenging stigma and discrimination, mobilizing support, educating community members on the universality of human rights, and changing the attitudes of the wider (non-sex worker) community are activities that test the most robust of organizations and networks. Two examples (Box 1.5) illustrate the importance of partnerships and the centrality of community empowerment in achieving structural shifts. Box 1.5 Case example: Promoting human rights and social entitlements with police and government in Thailand and Brazil Criminalizing the possession of condoms violates sex workers’ right to health, but in Thailand it is a common practice of local law enforcement, despite a government directive intended to prevent it. Sex Workers in Group (SWING), a community-led organization, has developed an innovative and pragmatic partnership to involve police cadets in its outreach programme. Cadets are offered three-week internships working alongside SWING volunteers to promote condom use. At the end of the internship, the cadets give a presentation to all 1,200 police academy students. As a result of this programme, sex workers have experienced less police harassment and fewer arrests. Furthermore, the police interns have become promoters and protectors of the human rights of sex workers, changing police culture from the inside. In Brazil, the sex worker-led organization Davida—Prostituição, Direitos Civis, Saúde has for years fought stigma and discrimination surrounding sex work. It has partnered with the Brazilian government to establish policy committees, run mass media campaigns to change community attitudes and has been instrumental in shaping the government’s response to AIDS. One of Davida’s most important successes has been its advocacy with the government to recognize sex work as a profession, guaranteeing sex workers the same rights as all other workers, including receiving a pension upon retirement. 1.2.6 Community systems strengthening (strengthening the collective) Forming any collective is challenging, but maintaining and strengthening it is even more difficult. Community-led movements around the world face significant barriers, including inadequate funding, too few paid staff, complex community needs, political opposition to their existence, competition for resources from within and outside their communities and lack of recognition of the importance of their populations. Sex worker organizations and networks, as collectives, face all of these challenges and more. The marginalization and lack of visibility of sex workers within legal, social and economic structures at all levels of society means that their organizations and networks are typically underfunded and undervalued. A strong community-led organization is characterized by vibrant membership, increasing financial independence, greater political power and wider social engagement. There are several ways this is achieved (see Box 1.6). When implementing an HIV response, governments, donors, the broader civil society movement, local organizations and multilateral agencies have a responsibility to provide sustainable support to sex worker organizations and networks. Such support should not be tied to particular donor-driven ideologies that conflict with the needs and priorities determined by the community. This risk can be mitigated—and more productive funding strategies negotiated—if the community empowerment process has progressed to the stage where decision-making power is vested within the community-led organization. 12