We recently wrote about how sex workers are often encouraged to take part in economic empowerment programmes when we published the briefing paper titled: ‘Economic Empowerment: Does Rehabilitation Have a Role?’
Today we publish the accompanying report that briefing paper titled: ‘Economic Empowerment Programmes for Sex Workers: Africa Regional Report’
There is a general lack of good quality rights-based economic empowerment programmes for sex workers across Africa. There is much to be done and this report and accompanying briefing paper aims to
This regional report evaluates both successful and failed economic empowerment programmes by sex worker-led organisations and non-sex worker-led organisations. The aim of the report was to document the lessons learnt and good practice examples to help build and strengthen the capacity of sex worker organisations working to promote the human rights of sex workers and to document sex worker-led responses in Africa. The report documents 7 case studies of economic empowerment programmes in 6 African countries: Democratic Republic of Congo; Ethiopia; Kenya; Malawi; Nigeria; and Uganda.
Each of the case studies includes a discussion on the factors that contributed to a programme’s success or failure.
The report is divided into 4 sections:
- Section 1: three sex worker-led economic empowerment programmes -two of which are in-depth studies of sex worker-led economic empowerment programmes by NSWP members, Nikat (Ethiopia) and HOYMAS (Kenya).
- Section 2: case study of a successful non-sex worker-led economic empowerment programme in Nigeria.
- Section 3: three case studies on economic empowerment programmes that failed.
- Section 4: discusses the lessons learnt from these programmes and how rights-based approaches deliver quality economic empowerment programmes for sex workers.
The report concludes with a number of recommendations for practitioners and implementers of economic empowerment programmes for sex workers
This report has an accompanying briefing paper titled: ‘Economic Empowerment: Does Rehabilitation Have a Role?’. The briefing paper documents 4 case studies of economic empowerment programmes for sex workers aiming to rehabilitate sex workers in 4 African countries; Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Malawi, Nigeria and Uganda.
The Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) received funding from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the ‘Stepping Up, Stepping Out Project’ by AIDS Fonds to support the development of advocacy tools around rights-based economic empowerment for sex workers. The first part of the project documented case studies of economic empowerment programmes in the Asia Pacific region. The output from this part of the SUSO project is documented in the Regional Report ‘Sex Workers Demonstrate Economic and Social Empowerment’ and the Regional Briefing Paper titled: ‘Sex Workers Demonstrate Economic and Social Empowerment: Overcoming Practices That Limit Sex Worker Agency in the Asia Pacific Region’.