This International Sex Workers’ Day 2026, Women4GlobalFund (W4GF) joined the African Young Sex Workers Alliance (YoSWA) in issuing the joint statement “Nothing About Us Without Us: Joint Statement on Sex Workers’ Rights, Health and Leadership.”
YoSWA is a regional network led by and for young sex workers across Africa, working to advance the rights, health, leadership and meaningful participation of young sex workers in policy, advocacy and decision-making spaces. That is why we found it powerful to team up and in calling attention to the structural barriers that continue to undermine the health, safety and dignity of sex workers, including criminalisation, stigma, discrimination and gender-based violence.
This year’s statement comes at a critical moment. According to the UNAIDS Global AIDS Update 2024, a median of 26% of sex workers experienced violence in the previous 12 months, while sex workers living in criminalised settings are seven times more likely to live with HIV than those in decriminalised contexts. At the same time, scientific advances such as Lenacapavir (LEN), which has demonstrated 99% efficacy in preventing HIV acquisition, offer unprecedented opportunities to expand HIV prevention.
However, while scientific innovations such as Lenacapavir (LEN) offer unprecedented opportunities for HIV prevention, funding cuts and anti-rights backlash are threatening the community-led organisations and services that sex workers rely on. That is why our joint statement highlights a simple but urgent message: innovation alone is not enough. HIV prevention tools such as LEN must be introduced through community-led, person-centred and gender-transformative approaches that recognise sex workers as leaders, advocates and experts in their own realities.
As countries prepare and implement GC8 investments, it is essential that sex workers are not treated as beneficiaries alone, but as equal partners in shaping HIV responses and health systems.
Read our full call on the Global Fund and governments and share our full statement!
Nothing about us without us.
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