Kenya’s sex workers have solutions to their problems, but international NGOs aren’t hearing them

• In Kenya, rights organisations run by sex workers have gone into numerous partnerships with international organisations over the past decade.
• In recent research, I set out to understand whether these relationships worked in favour of the sex workers and their organisations.
• My research focused on an organisation in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, that supports male sex workers.

The research

• I investigated how international NGOs worked with a community-based organisation led by Kenyan sex workers.
• My focus was how more powerful organisations, such as international NGOs, include sex workers’ knowledge and expertise in these partnerships.
• This was despite NGO employees believing they had taken the perspectives of sex workers into account.

The gaps

• For example, NGOs asked the sex workers in my study to provide input on outreach strategies for HIV prevention.
• But they had already decided what they thought would work best – peer educators and a drop-in centre.
• We work within the context … and then we try … to take into account the more structural issues.
• They (headquarters) have set out goals and strategies towards epidemic control and everything we do is guided in that context.
• We work within the context … and then we try … to take into account the more structural issues.

What can be done

The sex workers in my study wanted their knowledge to be included in development partnerships. They identified three things they’d want development organisations to consider.
Take sex workers’ experiential knowledge more seriously. Acknowledge that their insights are as important as academic and professional knowledge.
Acknowledge the leadership, creativity and expertise of marginalised communities. Allow these groups to design programmes based on their unique desires and needs. Community-led research methods can help make this a reality. Support communities to address what they – instead of others – consider important and liberating.
Recognise and disrupt the power dynamics in the international aid system. Dominant actors need to unlearn the power differences in their relationships with communities, which are often uncritically perceived as natural. Critically examine assumptions and practices. Question the legitimacy of the expertise of donors in community collaborations, and see whether there are gaps created by sidelining sex work-related knowledge.
Lise Woensdregt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.