WUNRN
SANGRAM Website: http://www.sangram.org/
SEX WORKERS RIGHTS - HIV/AIDS
INFECTION & PREVENTION
By Meena
Saraswathi Seshu, General Secretary of Sampada Grameen Mahila Sanstha. Seshu
delivered the Jonathan Mann Memorial Lecture at the International AIDS
Conference 2010.
The phrase
“rights-based approach” flows easily into the speaking points and materials of
many organizations and even governments when they talk about meeting the
challenge of HIV. This is a good thing if the phrase really means
something. But I am concerned that “rights-based approach” loses its
meaning when people think that it’s a matter of just inviting affected people
to a meeting, or speaking kindly of them, or even just dropping the phrase
“rights-based” into a mission statement.
In my
plenary speech, I will recount the story of our work in SANGRAM as an
example of confronting HIV with human rights as a real – and not just
rhetorical – everyday guide to action. There was nothing easy about our
effort to make human rights more than an abstract framework, but achieving this
goal is feasible. I know that we have learnt lessons that can benefit HIV
work in many settings and cultures.
The journey
of our struggle is too rich to describe in this short blog, but let me try to
highlight a few key elements.
When I, an
educated, upper-class woman began to spend time with sex workers as a
population “vulnerable” to HIV, I found that they were treated almost as
non-humans by society, and I could hardly fathom how they could live and work
amidst so much social disdain and dismissiveness. I quickly realized that
I knew nothing about them, their community, or their work. But, as I learned by
letting them teach me, amongst themselves they were not disempowered. They
managed their work, their clients, their families and the community that they
made for themselves. AIDS was a terrible threat in their world, but they
only needed the right tools, and they would manage AIDS too.
But instead
of listening to them, the AIDS establishment – led by well-intentioned health
service providers and educators – wanted to teach them “client negotiation skills”
and turn them over to the same health services that had always treated them
with hateful abuse. It was ridiculous that anyone should think they could
teach sex workers anything about clients. Rather, they needed basic information
about preventing HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, ready access to
condoms, and health services that would treat them respectfully. After
much effort and some missteps, SANGRAM, the organization we formed, and VAMP,
the sex workers collective that grew from it, achieved good health services for
sex workers. Even more importantly, through our efforts, sex workers
became not just patients but agents of health and HIV information and services
for themselves, their clients and the larger community. Within a few months
we were reaching more than 5,000 women in 52 sites distributing 350,000 condoms
per month. It is no exaggeration to say that sex workers led the charge
against HIV in our villages and towns, and they largely won. Many lives
have been saved because they mobilized their own power to beat this disease.
As they took
control of the struggle against HIV, the sex workers also took more control of
other elements of their rights and safety. Subjected to consistent police
harassment, physical abuse by vigilantes, and at times violent “rescue”
operations by outsiders, the women organized against this victimisation.
When I first knew the sex workers, as lower-caste women they did not feel they
could enter the police station to make a complaint. After our years of
struggle, the police, local officials and community and religious leaders
regard SANGRAM and VAMP as a force to be dealt with honourably and
respectfully. Sex workers changed the local power structure, and everyone
in the community has benefited.
Over time, I
continued to be impressed by how this group of women understood that sex work
was only one small piece of the AIDS challenge. It was through their
initiative and insight that SANGRAM took on HIV prevention among rural women
and young people for whom social and gender norms were a barrier to basic
information about sexually transmitted diseases and safer sex. The public
events we have organized to discuss these former taboos have transformed our
communities, including bringing into the open the age-old problem of violence
against women and girls. The sex workers also pushed SANGRAM to offer
ground-breaking assistance to hijras and kothis – the horribly rejected men who
have sex with men in our community – who now also are less hidden and less repressed.
This kind of
struggle is never complete. But we continue to learn from each other, to
work hard to respect and honour each other, and to help everyone in the
community know that he or she has the right to be protected from HIV, from
violence, from rejection and exclusion. I hope that our experience can be
an inspiration for others.
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