Sex Workers

1. Sex Workers

2. 5 key themes • Networks and associations • Who are sex workers? • Approaches to HIV and sex work • Structural vulnerabilities • Political engagement and cultural bias

3. Networks and Associations Issues • Empowerment • Differentiation • Participation • Partnership

4. Networks and Associations Actions • Empowerment: Nothing for us without us • support capacity building of networks within and across borders - recognizing there are strong networks and weaker networks • Human rights are sex workers rights • Differentiation: Be complex • Representation can be a vexed issue do opt for cross representation: be inclusive and involve all groups of sex workers from rural, urban, street-based, brothel-based, identified and non-identified sex workers, female, male and transgender, mothers with children, college students, part time, full time, occasional, seasonal • Identify gatekeepers - key people accessing other sex workers

5. Networks and Associations Actions • Partnership: Working together • Undertake stakeholder mapping of all the key people, protocols stipulating who can do what, linkage across region • Form committees/develop accords/formal partnerships/informal partnerships between sex workers, government, civil society, health, law enforcement, the judiciary, social services, and other relevant partners at regional, national, sub national and community levels • Participation: New ways of working and thinking • You don’t have to be sitting at the table to participate. Use new technology for inclusion and knowledge sharing • not all sex workers self-identify so go where they are. • Open up spaces for people to feel comfortable and included.

6. Who are sex workers? • People • Women, men and transgender adults, over the age of 18 who voluntarily sell sex • Identified and non-identified • Not all sex workers need or want the same things. Empowerment, inclusion, partnership and participation should facilitate individual agency of life choices and options • Sex work is the preferred term (not transactional sex or survival sex) - people sell sex for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of circumstances. • Children are not sex workers – they are victims of commercial sexual exploitation* Sex work is not the same as trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation* • * (not discussed by the group but important to remember)

7. Approaches Issues– includes structural vulnerabilities, political engagement and cultural bias • Harm reduction approach • Human Rights based approach • Political engagement and responsibility National AIDS Plans and Global Fund Grants • Implementation • Developmental approach • Knowledge sharing • Specific responses in a generalised epidemic

8. Approaches Issues – includes structural vulnerabilities, political engagement and cultural bias • Harm reduction(harm minimisation) similar to approach for injecting drug use: • Provides an immediate public health response • Provides an avenue for action even in the context where sex work is illegal by facilitating formal partnerships between health and law enforcement agencies. • Provides a policy environment where police have the legitimacy of protecting the human rights of sex workers, facilitating their access to services, instead of agents of violence and harassment. • Is evidence-based, reduces HIV risk and vulnerability and is premised on community engagement and management.

9. Approaches - Actions • Human rights based approach • Response to HIV and sex work needs to be comprehensive, evidence-based and based on human rights principles • Political engagement and responsibility • Inclusion of HIV and sex work in National AIDS Plans, Strategies and funding proposals, including Global Fund Grants • Implementation of the Maputo Call for Action on HIV and Sex Work 2007 • SADC needs to take this on and develop and implement a regional actions • Strengthen the voices of African sex workers and networks within the global level dialogue and advocacy • Address and unmask denial and hypocrisy

10. Approaches - Actions • Implementation • Capacity building • Scaling up but maintaining locally relevant responses. • Be focused, start now, don’t do everything • Short and long term interventions • Monitoring and measuring impact & cost effectiveness Developmental approach • Increasing school retention • PRSPs, migration and mobility, humanitarian settings • GBV and gender norms • Job creation to reduce un/underemployment • Community development – healthy communities means healthy people

11. Approaches - Actions • Knowledge sharing • Use the participants of this meeting as the basis for one knowledge sharing hub/mechanism • Use modern communication methods to learn and inform • Share examples of good practice and lessons learned • Develop a community of technical support to build capacity • Strengthen the evidence base with research, documentation, monitoring, impact evaluation, anthropological studies, mapping, situational analyses • Share across and within programmes, agencies, departments and disciplines • Specific responses within a generalised epidemic • Know your epidemic: determine what is necessary to shift the mindset of policy makers to create the political space for evidence-based responses.