Amid all the talk about preventing gender-based violence, sex workers are ignored

Mail & Guardian

2 days ago

When courts dismiss violence on the basis of occupation, the message is clear: sex workers' lives matter less.
As International Sex Workers Day approaches, many will rush to be seen. Statements will be issued, social media tiles shared and a flurry of symbolic visibility will flicker across timelines. But for sex workers on the front lines, skin-deep solidarity does nothing to help them navigate broken health systems, violent law enforcement and exclusionary public policy.
What makes sex work dangerous are the laws, policies and attitudes that surround it.
When police wield condoms as evidence, when shelters deny access based on moral judgment, when courts dismiss violence on the basis of occupation, the message is clear: sex workers' lives matter less.
This leads to a brutal reality in which sex workers are 17 times more likely to be killed than the rest of the population, according to a
The
What little recourse the broader population may have in law enforcement (as citizens, survivors of abuse, or as workers) is simply not available to sex workers when their jobs are a crime. A
Even worse, police officers often target and extort sex workers. A Serbian sex worker told researchers: '[The officer] pulled out a police badge and said 'C'mon, you want me to take you in [to jail] or screw you?' I was scared, and allowed him to screw me.'
Sex workers are stripped of their dignity day in and day out. They are no more than a legal inconvenience, a public relations liability, a line item in someone else's report.
This is not a coincidence. It is the result of systemic neglect.
The dangerous politics of protection
Human rights violations against sex workers are often masked by the language of public safety.
In many countries, 'rescue' operations involve rounding up sex workers, jailing them and forcing them into rehabilitation programmes that neither respect their rights nor improve their safety. Such abuses are only strengthened by those in the the anti-trafficking sector who continue to conflate consensual sex work with forced labour.
At the same time, governments refuse to work with sex worker-led organisations as legitimate stakeholders in violence prevention.
The result? Interventions designed in boardrooms instead of communities and funding cycles that prioritise 'rescue' over rights.
Even in relatively progressive contexts, decriminalisation is debated endlessly while police brutality continues without pause.
Most countries operate under partial criminalisation or vague regulatory frameworks that leave sex workers exposed to violence without legal recourse. These grey zones are not neutral, they're often lethal.
And in today's political climate, where anti-rights movements are gaining ground in every region, sex workers are among the first to be targeted, often alongside LGBTQ+ people and migrants. The rollback of hard-won human rights always starts with those who have the least institutional power. And too often, sex workers are treated as expendable.
What real safety looks like
It does not have to be this way.
There is no shortage of evidence on what works when sex workers are seen as experts in their own lives and supported to lead the response.
A
The Lancet
found that community empowerment approaches, those led by sex workers themselves, result in lower rates of violence, better health outcomes and increased condom use.
Safety for sex workers looks like:
Decriminalisation of all aspects of consensual adult sex work;
Legal reform to ensure that sex workers can report violence without fear of arrest;
Access to justice that includes legal aid, human rights training for law enforcement, and pathways to restitution;
Non-discriminatory health care, inclusive of sexual and reproductive health, mental health, and trauma services; and
Sustainable funding for sex worker-led movements, not just token consultation.
We don't need more research. We need more political courage.
The Cost of Erasure
As someone who works at the intersection of gender-based violence and sex work, I've witnessed the deep institutional reluctance to name sex workers as survivors of violence in their own right.
I've read strategies to fight gender-based violence that list every vulnerable group except the one most consistently brutalised by the state.
I've seen national action plans that mention 'inclusive' services while operating under laws that criminalise the very people they claim to serve.
Silence tells sex workers that their pain is not valid, their voices not credible and their rights not urgent. Sex workers are not passive victims waiting to be rescued. They are advocates, care workers, organisers and strategists who have built safety networks in the absence of state protection.
They are the ones who distribute condoms, educate peers, challenge stigma and hold abusive systems to account.
Any violence prevention strategy that does not include them at the centre is not only inadequate, it is dishonest.
On this International Sex Workers Day, we must go beyond gestures. The international community cannot continue to ignore the double standard it applies to sex workers when it comes to gender justice.
Governments cannot claim to care about ending gender-based violence while criminalising, excluding and persecuting sex workers.
Safety is not a buzzword. It is the outcome of political decisions about who is worthy of protection and who is abandoned to survive alone.
If we are serious about ending violence against women and gender-diverse people, we must start where the system is most violent and most unaccountable. And that means standing with sex workers, not as an act of charity, but as an act of solidarity and justice.
Because safety doesn't appear when it's merely used as a slogan, it has to be built up as a system. We won't fix the system we've got now by ignoring the people who have survived its worst failures.
Tian Johnson is the founder of the Pan-African health justice NGO, The African Alliance and GBV adviser to the Hands Off 2 programme which works with sex worker-led organisations, religious leaders, law enforcement, service providers and NGOs dedicated to human rights in efforts to reduce violence against sex workers.