PEPFAR has made anti-retroviral treatment (ART) available for many people, including sex workers.  However, PEPFAR funding contracts with organisations specify that a certain amount of this money be spent on abstinence programming.  Contracts include a clause that the organisation accepting funding is opposed to prostitution.  This has been called the 'anti-prostitution pledge' or 'anti-prostitution loyalty oath'.

The criminalisation of sex workers’ clients is often claimed to be part of a new legal framework to eradicate sex work and trafficking by ‘ending demand’. In 1999, Sweden criminalised sex workers’ clients and maintained the criminalisation of third parties such as brothel-owners, managers, security and support staff. The individual selling of sex remained legal. This model is frequently referred to as the ‘Swedish’, ‘Nordic’ or ‘End Demand’ model. There is great pressure in many countries to advance such legal and policy measures. The damaging consequences of this model on sex workers’ health, rights and living conditions are rarely discussed.  

The conflation of trafficking and migration with sex work, in law and practice, presents challenges to NSWP.

This NSWP briefing paper explains how sex work is conflated with trafficking; the legal framework; how demand for sex work is conflated with trafficking; the dangers of conflating trafficking with sex work, its impacts on sex workers’ lives and work; the impact on sex worker programming; and offers some recommendations for policy makers, donors and for civil society.