While progress in the HIV response has significantly reduced the number of HIV infections and deaths worldwide, sex workers and other key populations remain disproportionately impacted by the epidemic.
This infographic is a summary of the Policy Brief: Sex Worker-Led Organisations and the Sustainability of the HIV Response.
HIV burden among sex workers remains disproportionately high in nearly all Global Fund-supported countries, with persistent gaps in prevention, testing and treatment coverage.
Climate change is a phenomenon marked by global warming, rising sea levels, environmental degradation, and increased rates of natural disasters. These changes have not only impacted the environment, but have also played a role in food and water scarcity and driven migration and displacement. Across the world, the issue of climate change has also reshaped politics, economies, and daily life, creating new forms of risks and vulnerability.
Climate change is a phenomenon marked by global warming, rising sea levels, environmental degradation, and increased rates of natural disasters. These changes have not only impacted the environment, but have also played a role in food and water scarcity and driven migration and displacement. Across the world, the issue of climate change has also reshaped politics, economies, and daily life, creating new forms of risks and vulnerability.
While progress in the HIV response has significantly reduced the number of HIV infections and deaths worldwide, sex workers and other key populations remain disproportionately impacted by the epidemic. In 2022, sex workers had a nine times higher risk of acquiring HIV compared to the general adult population globally. At the same time, funding gaps for sex worker- and other key population-led programming are widening.
Policy frameworks for gender equality, such as the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BDPfA), aim to uphold the rights of diverse women and address barriers to health, social justice, economic development, and political participation. However, sex workers remain overwhelmingly excluded from the development and implementation of these gender equality roadmaps. Despite years of alliance-building, many actors in the women’s movement continue to show hostility towards sex workers and exclude them from feminist spaces.
The four global key population-led networks - Global Action for Trans Equality (GATE), Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD), and MPact Global Action for Gay Men’s Health and Rights (MPact) - were provided with funding by the Global Fund Political & Civil Society Advocacy Team in the External Relations and Communications Department to develop a comprehensive position paper, in consultation with their members, on key population communities at the centre of the global HIV response.
On Friday, 30 May 2025, INPUD, GATE, NSWP, and MPact, in partnership with GBGMC, hosted a global webinar to share urgent updates on the Global Fund’s reprioritisation and grant revision process. This process, which is currently underway at the country level, is aimed at reprogramming and scaling back Grant Cycle 6 and 7 (GC6 and GC7) grants in response to the growing global financial crisis affecting health and development funding.
In 2022, the Global Fund introduced their 2023–2028 Strategy: Fighting Pandemics and Building a Healthier and More Equitable World. This strategy has been implemented to guide Global Fund approaches, decision-making, and investments from 2023–2028. Central to this strategy is the Global Fund’s commitment to “put[ting] the most affected communities at the centre of everything we do,” emphasising the importance increasing and leveraging community leadership, knowledge, and experience.
Social protection is a fundamental human right enshrined in core international human rights frameworks, as well as numerous regional human rights frameworks. ‘Social protection’ refers to measures designed to prevent and address situations which negatively affect people’s wellbeing, as well as measures which reduce vulnerability and facilitate social and economic stability.