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by Vicci Tallis
The police come to your shack in the van. They take your money and sleep with you with no condoms. It is a rape because they force us. We are scared to report the rape because we are sex workers, so we are illegal (1)
Female, male and transgendered sex-workers in Southern Africa have long been disempowered by the systematic denial of their rights in the context of a legislative framework that criminalises sex-work. Sex-work is not viewed as legitimate work and yet evidence suggests that the overwhelming motive behind the exchange of sexual services for the provider is economic opportunity. (2) The context of some sex work in Africa is “survival sex”, and sex work is a means to make money for women, men and transgendered sex workers and their families to remain alive. In this way, survival sex is a form of small-scale informal money making. Some women in the informal sector are simply extending their existing capabilities and livelihoods and doing work that is typified as women’s work. They are seldom, as is usually the case with women’s work, well paid for their efforts.
In 2008 OSI and OSISA commissioned research into the experiences of sex workers in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. The report, Rights not Rescue, highlights the extreme violations of rights, ongoing abuses and difficulties facing sex workers. The research has been used as a catalyst to mobilize sex-workers to address the abuse they face in an organised and strategic way.
Police Brutality:
Sex workers experience extremely high levels of violence in their daily life and work. Police violence is rife, including stealing money from sex workers, harassment, sexual assault and rape and beatings.
Police who perpetrate violence against sex workers are never sanctioned, and reporting such violence to other police is futile. Sex workers are also subjected to violence from other sources: clients, border officials, community members and health care workers. Agencies that are supposed to promote and protect human rights are the very places where abuse towards sex workers happens the most. Litigation is one strategy to address such high levels of systematic and organised violence. In Namibia, Botswana and South Africa, sex workers are contemplating this root as an option to ensure that violence against sex workers is halted. In South Africa, sex workers fought against arrest with-out being charged and won the case against the police.
Access denied:
The attitudes and actions of health care workers marginalise sex workers and deny them access to proper care. The behaviour of health care workers often results in sex workers deciding to explore other options for health services, or not attending to their health at all.
“I am HIV positive, and at the hospital, they don’t treat us like humans. They say loudly ‘These ones they are selling themselves.’ So now, the young sex workers won’t go to the hospital because they are scared. Some women have chosen to die with no ARVs rather than go there, because if you are a sex worker and HIV+, you are in for it! They get angry at you if you are not using condoms, but we tell them: give us the skills to negotiate using a condom. We want these skills because we can see that like this we are dying slowly but surely”. (3)
The impact of HIV and AIDS has been felt by sex workers: in their daily lives as they try to protect themselves and their clients, and the challenges of living with HIV when there is limited access to health care.
Sex workers, both those involved in survival sex and those who consciously chose to be engaged in sex work, experience multiple oppressions and human rights violations, which increase vulnerability to HIV infection. (4) Sex work that is poverty driven is more likely to foster behaviours that are risk-taking. (5) The promise of more money to have sex without a condom is a constant pressure and the rape of sex workers is a reality. It is not easy for sex workers to protect themselves. Sex workers who are found on the streets with condoms are arrested as ‘prostitutes’. Despite these hardships sex workers have developed innovative ways collectively to help reduce the risk of HIV and to ensure that they always have access to condoms.
Multiple marginalisation:
There are sex workers, who are further marginalised, such as migrant sex workers, sex workers who are HIV positive and trans sex workers. These layers of oppression and marginalisation make life for sex workers even more difficult. Migrant sex workers are particularly excluded from access to treatment and care due to both xenophobia and lack of access to services that tend to be restricted to nationals. Transgendered sex workers who seek trans-specific health care and gay male sex workers seeking non-judgmental health care are similarly neglected. (6)
“Twenty-three of my friends died of AIDS. Nineteen trans women and four women, all sex workers. None of them got ARV’s. It was the fear of discrimination and abuse from the doctors that kept them from getting medication. The fear of what might be said and done to them, because being trans is something everyone sees and the doctors say nasty things to us.”
Within the emerging sex worker movements issues of identity and multiple layers of oppressions are being addressed and highlighted.
Sex workers are empowered.
Despite the extreme difficulties that sex workers face they are not passive victims. Sex workers are strong and have developed mechanisms to support themselves and each other. The report demonstrates the resilience of sex workers, how they are fighting to protect their rights, organising in alternative ways to ensure they have a steady supply of condoms, speaking out for those more marginalised and building a movement of sex workers calling for rights not rescue, for sex work to be seen as legitimate work and greater access to services. It is important to support the development of sex worker movements, to build the emerging leadership and to provide platforms for sex-workers to voice their demands.
Call to Action
The report highlights key recommendations for government, civil society organisations and to funders. Some of the recommendations are:
• Decriminalise sex work. Should the demand to see sex work as work and the decriminalization of sex work be realized it will impact significantly on the safety of sex work and sex workers .
• Ensure sex workers have access to police protection, not police brutality
• Ensure mechanisms for the redress of human and labour rights violations
• Support sex-worker led initiatives and programmes
• Strengthen emerging sex worker movements
The report should anger everyone that reads it. We should be angry because the rights of sex workers are constantly violated and abused. We should be angry because sex workers are treated as less than human. We should be angry because sex workers efforts to earn money to support their families are being undermined.
We need to harness our anger and act – whoever we are, sex worker, activist, NGO worker, government official, international agency. We need collective action and we need to stand behind and support sex workers who are fighting for their rights.
Endnotes
(1) Priscilla and Pinki in Crago, A.N. and Arnott, J. 2008. p2
(2) Tawil et al in Collins J. and Rau, B. 2000.
(3) Rashida in Crago, A.N. and Arnott, J. 2008. p4
(4) Crago, A.N. and Arnott, J. 2008. Kurtz, S.P., Surratt, H.L., Kiley, M.C. and Incaiardi, J.A. 2005.
(5) Tallis, 2009.
(6) Crago, A.N. and Arnott, J. 2008
Vicci Tallis is the HIV and AIDS Programme Manager at the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA). OSISA is a member of the international alliance for the Women WON'T wait. End HIV and Violence Against Women. NOW. Campaign.
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Watch out for our daily blogs during the 16 days of Activism:
25 Nov - Intensify efforts in ending all forms of violence against women and girls (Shamillah Wilson, South Africa)
26 - Are All Defenders Equal? (Cynthia Rothschild, New York, USA)
27 - Give me back my movement! (Everjoice J. Win, Zimbabwe)
28 - An essential package of services to deal with two interlinked human rights and rights crises. (Neelanjana Mukhia, India)
29th - Questions of accountability and violence against women and girl and HIV&AIDS. (Shamillah Wilson, South Africa)
30th - Female Condoms: Now More Than Ever. (Kimberley Whipkey, USA)
1st Dec - Violence of Judgementalism (Meena Saraswathi Seshu, India)
2nd - Violence Against Women, Disasters and Climate Change (Jacqui Patterson, USA)
3rd - Silenced Links: Violence and HIV in Women. A current look at Latin America and the Caribbean. (Mabel Bianco, Argentina)
4th - Sexist Violence. Some Data to take into consideration. (Nirvana Gonzalez Rosa, Puerto Rico/Chile)
5th - Sex Workers. Sex Worker Rights. (Aziza Ahmed, USA)
Rights Not Rescue. Experiences of Sex Workers in Southern Africa. (Vicci Tallis, South Africa)
6th - Criminalisation of HIV and concerns for violence against women. (Norah Matovu Winyi, Kenya)
7th - Issues of violence against lesbian women and lesbian, bi- and transsexual women. (Vicci Tallis, South Africa)
8th - Violence against women in conflict situations. (Mary Wandia - Kenya and Neelanjana Mukhia - India)
9th - Today the enemy is homosexual. Tomorrow it could be you. (Christine Butegwa, Uganda)
10th - Our work isnt done - response to VAW as a consequence of HIV (Neelanjana Mukhia, India)
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The Women WON'T wait. End HIV and Violence Against Women. NOW. Campaign is an international coalition of organizations and networks working to promote women's health and human rights in the struggle to address HIV and AIDS and end all forms of violence against women and girls.
Members of the campaign are: Action Aid; African Women’s Development and Communications Network (FEMNET);
Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID); Akina Mama wa Afrika; Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL); Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE); Fundación para Estudio e Investigación de la Mujer (FEIM); GESTOS-Soropositividade, Comunicação & Gênero; International Community of Women Living with HIV&AIDS Southern Africa (ICW-Southern Africa); International Women’s AIDS Caucus; International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC);
Latin American and Caribbean Women’s Health Network; Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA); Program on International Health and Human Rights, Harvard School of Public Health; SANGRAM; VAMP; and Women and Law in Southern Africa (WLSA).
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