Sex work and HIV vulnerability

HIV vulnerability can be seen at the individual, community and policy level. Sex workers in developing countries are disproportionately affected by illnesses and conditions caused by social exclusion, poverty and gender-based violence. Although the potential for commercial sex to play important roles in expanding HIV epidemics is well recognised, HIV and AIDS-related prevention, treatment and care for sex workers remains inadequate.

As a result, sex workers of all genders are vulnerable to STIs and women are at greater risk of unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortion. Sex workers face discrimination and vulnerability to different degrees and in different ways according to their individual social and economic circumstances and those of the setting they are working in. Transgender, drug-using and migrant sex workers are often particularly vulnerable to HIV and human rights abuses.

By framing sex workers’ health as a rights issue, the focus of HIV prevention work with sex workers shifts from individual-level behaviour change communication to comprehensive development work aimed at sex workers’ empowerment, participation and self organising. It also opens the way to hold governments and non-governmental organisations accountable for rights abuses against sex workers.

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