Stigma, discrimination against sex workers
The Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV & AIDS (PANCAP) has set up a knowledge management team to increase education in an effort to reduce stigma and discrimination against sex workers.
Dr Shanti Singh-Anthony
The organisation recently participated at the Caribbean Sex Work Coalition Sex Worker Implementation Tool (SWIT) Meeting. Its Knowledge for Health (K4Health) project engaged more than 20 participants of the CSWC SWIT workshop in a ‘net-mapping’ activity to determine how stigma and discrimination affect their ability to advocate for human rights, access to HIV prevention and care, and HIV/AIDS education.
K4Health Project Knowledge Management Adviser Sarah Fohl stated that net-mapping was a knowledge management tool that allowed “participants to determine the relationships, actors, barriers and opportunities within their communities that significantly affect their lives”.
She explained that the net-mapping exercise allowed participants to work together and identify barriers and opportunities to adequate access to condoms and education about safe sex and HIV/AIDS.
Dr Shanti Singh-Anthony, the Knowledge Management Coordinator, stated that sex workers face a great amount of discrimination because of their line of work.
“It was important for the participants of the workshop to clearly identify what prevents them from gaining sufficient knowledge on HIV/AIDS, as well as prevention tools so that advocates can identify solutions to remove these barriers with the aim of eliminating the spread of AIDS,” she noted.
The net-mapping activity complements the goal of the workshop to educate participants on the SWIT, which offers practical guidance on effective HIV and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) programming for sex workers. It provides evidence of the importance of decriminalising sex work, the involvement of sex workers in developing policy, and the empowerment and self-determination of sex-working communities as a fundamental part of the fight against HIV.
It was agreed upon that the aim was “for sex workers and leaders of the groups represented to propagate the messages and lessons learnt through the PANCAP-K4Health activity among their peers in their respective countries so that more sex workers are playing an active role in responding to stigma and discrimination barriers to HIV prevention tools and education”.
The idea for the workshop was generated after leaders of the CSWC participated in the Global Fund SWIT workshop in October 2015 in Ecuador, as well as additional SWIT training activities earlier in 2015 organised by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). SWIT was created by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and is based on its 2012 recommendations on HIV and Sex Work.
PANCAP Director Dereck Springer is advocating for more attention to be focused on the issue of stigma and discrimination within the sex work environment.
