Funders' priorities and targets hindered community mobilisation and meaningful participation of sex workers in India
aidsmap.com, Juni 2015 - "Two qualitative studies, investigating the implementation of a massive programme of HIV prevention through community mobilisation in India, have identified challenges to the rapid scale-up and roll-out of a programme in which grassroots action was meant to be central.
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While the programme was intended to empower sex workers to tackle the social conditions which made them more vulnerable to HIV, a more narrow focus on condoms and clinical services took over. This discouraged sex workers from getting involved in the programme." (...) "While the programme emphasised condom use, many sex workers were more concerned about poverty, extortion, stigma, harassment and other day-to-day challenges. Staff expressed frustration with the narrow focus: HIV “is one of the hundred issues [that sex workers face]. We are so focused on HIV because of which quality gets suffered. We should think about other issues too but we are only about completing targets and not really having comprehensive approach.” |