Kisumu County Sex Workers Commit to Implement an Advocacy Strategy to end Human Rights Violations affecting them

 Pro bono advocate taking participants through Constitutional provisions pro sex work    Picture By: KELIN/Edgar Makona

The training of sex workers on HIV, human rights and the law came to a close on June 2, 2014 in Kisumu County with participants eager to implement various advocacy activities they had come up with following a session that was covered during the training on “Understanding Advocacy.”

The forum, which took place from September 1 – 2, 2014, was an initiative by KELIN in partnership with Keeping Alive Societies Hope and ARASA, bringing together representatives of male and female sex workers from the county of Kisumu. The aim of the training was to ensure that sex workers are able to demand for their rights and ensure that their rights are respected and enforced.

The key issues highlighted were;

1.     The need to involve members of the public in the advocacy activities so as to create a general understanding amongst members of the public on sex work and the need to respect their rights so as to ensure HIV prevalence amongst sex workers is reduced and the number of new infections amongst sex workers gets to zero.

2.     Abuse of sex workers is mainly perpetuated by county askaris and members of the public who attack and assault male sex workers.

3.     It was agreed that there is an immediate need to build the capacities of members of the public and county askaris on the benefits of respecting sex workers and how respect of sex work can go a long way in the fight against HIV.

With these as the emerging issues and the National AIDS Control Council pushing for county ownership of the HIV response, addressing the legal barriers has become more important than ever as evidenced by a video produced by KASH with support from Open Society Foundation.

KELIN and KASH committed to closely work with the key populations to ensure sex workers rights are upheld. The full workshop report will be available on the website in due course.

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