Implementing Comprehensive HIV/STI Programmes with Sex Workers Implementing Comprehensive HIV/STI Programmes with | Page 37

1 Community Empowerment

• Law enforcement authorities must be involved in the promotion and protection of the human
rights of sex workers, and programmes to create enabling legal and policy environments should
be funded and supported.
• Economic empowerment of sex workers is essential: sex workers should be accorded the same
rights as all other informal workers7 to safe and fair working conditions, with skills training and
education for life, access to bank accounts and fair credit programmes, and the same potential
to support their families and plan for their future as all other members of the wider community.
• Donor organizations may support the process of sex worker empowerment by funding initiatives
to increase capacity among sex workers and support organizational development. It is important
to note that international agreements and policies at a global level may either facilitate or hinder
community empowerment among sex workers by allowing or restricting access to financial
resources by sex worker groups and collectives.

Box 1.8

Case example: South-South partnerships between
sex worker-led organizations
The Global Network of Sex Work Projects has spearheaded initiatives to strengthen South-South
cooperation among sex worker-led organizations. The rationale is to partner stronger, longer-established
sex worker-led organizations and networks with those in the process of strengthening their movement.
This enables sharing of experiences, learning new ideas and forming new alliances.
Following the Kolkata Sex Worker Freedom Festival in India in 2012, African sex workers undertook a study
tour to the Ashodaya Academy in Mysore, and the programmes of SANGRAM and VAMP in Sangli. This
study tour was followed up by a return visit by the Indian organizations to Kenya to discuss the establishment
of a learning site there and to participate in the African Sex Workers Alliance Strategic Planning Meeting.
Similarly, Bridging the Gaps, an international H IV programme, provides opportunities for sharing lessons
from HIV-related projects in Asia and Africa, including on community empowerment, capacity-building of
programme managers and identification of examples of good practice.
Such partnerships connect the local with the global, stimulating important knowledge-sharing and
contributing to strengthening the sex worker rights movement.

1.2.8 Sustaining the movement
To sustain themselves, sex worker-led movements should operate in solidarity with other social
movements, particularly those that also advocate for human rights. This may include movements of
other key populations who have similar experiences of heightened HIV risk and social exclusion, such
as men who have sex with men, people who use drugs and transgender people, some of whom are
sex workers, as well as organizations and networks of people living with HIV. Collaboration between
movements strengthens the collective response and ensures that communities are at the centre of
that response.
It is essential that development partners in lower- and middle-income countries, and governments
and national partners in all countries, actively support the sustainability of sex worker-led organizations
and networks. It is unreasonable to expect any group to grow from a small collection of individuals
to a movement whose members actively contribute to the national HIV response unless it receives
7 The International Labour Organization’s Recommendation concerning HIV and AIDS and the World of Work, 2010 (No. 200) covers “all workers working under all forms or
arrangements, and at all workplaces, including: (i) persons in any employment or occupation” (Paragraph 2(a)).

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