Publications & Tools

Aidsfonds commissioned a sex worker-led study Funding for key populations affected by HIV and AIDS – way off track? through the Briding the Gaps and PITCH partnerships. The study found that sex workers are severely under funded with only 2% of money for HIV programmes targeting them. This is especially alarming as key populations and their partners account for more than half of all the new HIV infections globally. Download the key findings Factsheet or read the full report.

Although originally created in order to develop a common language, and history within the JASS community, we quickly realized the dictionary’s potential as a vehicle for the political act of defining our world based on a distinct feminist perspective – one that recognizes how distortions in social, economic, and political power form the basis of inequality and justice.
Building on the 1st edition, this updated version incorporates the feedback of a number of reviewers within the JASS community. It is built on the collective expertise and experience of JASS’ community of feminist popular educators, scholars, and activists from 27 countries in Mesoamerica, Southeast Asia, and Southern Africa.

Published in 2014, Issue 3 of the Anti-Trafficking Review focuses on money trails in the anti-trafficking sector, and is the first of its kind as to date there has been no research on how much is spent combating the human rights abuses that amount to human trafficking. This themed issue looks at money trails that reveal how anti-trafficking money has changed the world for the better or for worse.

Learn more: Are we really listening?

Discover what funders are most likely to support, learn about their
interests and perspectives, and gain the knowledge you need to find
additional resources. [Note: Subscription required. FDO Essential subscriptions from $31.58/mo] View

Third Wave Fund’s Sex Worker Giving Ciricle, NCRP’s 2021 winner of the “Smashing Silos” Impact Award, shares four key lessons funders can use as they support sex worker-led organizations: provide unrestricted, multi-year grants, center trauma-informed, empathetic grantmaking, build multilingual grantmaking structures and emphasize language justice, and stop demanding fiscal sponsors, an imposition for some of the most effective groups. They write, “Directly funding the well-being, bodily autonomy and organizing of sex workers most impacted by oppression is in itself a radical vision and our biggest impact.”

HRFN’s report”examines the state of global human rights funding across issues and populations to explore where support for intersectionality may truly exist. The report is the first comprehensive and global analysis of when and if grants to support human rights reach beyond a single issue or community. The findings show that a resoundingly small fraction of human rights funding supports activism that cuts across multiple communities or issues. Just 18% of human rights grants name two populations, and less than 5% support three or more.”

Of all the populations explored, grants for sex workers were the most likely (71% compared to 33-65%) to be intersectional with at least 2 other populations.

Ariadne and EDGE Funders Alliance came together to create this website in order to acknowledge that project-restricted funding will most likely continue to be the most common way of supporting grantees while also advocating for a future where multi-year flexible funding is more common. Much of the data on this site is developed by Humentum and MilwayPLUS, facilitated by BDO FMA and resourced by Funders for Real Cost, Real Change (FRC) Collaborative and the Ford Foundation.
Explore the range of practices on this site to see how you can create impact and strengthen organizations for the long term by building more flexibility and trust into your grantmaking.

“In 2014, the Red Umbrella Fund partnered with Mama Cash and the Open Society Foundations to commission a mapping of global grantmaking for sex worker rights by public and private foundations and other non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The researchers contacted foundations and organisations working with sex workers to better understand what is being funded and to identify the main gaps.”

Funding needed to end violence against sex workers

Videos in a series from NSWP called Global Fund Basics.
Included are videos on:
The Board, Constituencies/Delegations, and Committees- you’ll hear about the history of the Global Fund, how it’s structured, how it works, the three civil society delegations and the three standing committees.
Country Coordinating Mechanisms (CCM) – The CCM is responsible for identifying the work that needs to be done in HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and submitting technical proposals to the Global Fund, identifying the Principle Recipient and overseeing the implementation of grants.
Catalytic Investments – Catalytic Investments are a portion of funding for the Global Fund supported programmes, activities and strategic investments that are not fully covered through country allocations.

The videos are in English and is also available with Spanish, French, and Russian subtitles.

The Global State of Harm Reduction is the only report that provides an independent analysis of harm reduction in the world. Now in its the seventh edition, the Global State of Harm Reduction 2020 is the most comprehensive global mapping of harm reduction responses to drug use, HIV and viral hepatitis.

This factsheet aims to summarize and compile information on funding focused on LGBTQI sex workers from the 2017?2018 Global Resources Report: Government and Philanthropic Support for LGBTI Communities published in May 2020 by Global Philanthropy Project (GPP). Available in English and Spanish.

ILGA World passed a resolution opposing all forms of criminalization and legal oppression of sex work. At the same time, the Trans Day of Remembrance reminded us that between January 2018 and September 2020, 60% of the 3,664 trans and gender diverse individuals murdered whose occupation is known were sex workers. In 2017-2018, the LGBTI sex worker human rights funding as a percentage of all LGBTI human rights funding was of less than 1%. “Reviewing data for 2017?2018, we see that in all regions and in a global analysis funding focused on LGBTI sex workers as a population has not matched the growth in overall LGBTI funding and in some regions has decreased over time.”

Fact sheet developed by Monique Tula and Charles Hawthorne from the Harm Reduction Coalition and Cris Sardina from the Desiree Alliance.

This discussion paper was commissioned by OSI’s Sexual Health and Rights Project for an international gathering held June 2006 in Johannesburg, South Africa, about the impact of laws, policies, and law enforcement practices on sex workers? health and human rights.NGOs, agencies, and funders who work with people in sex work have used different frameworks, such as harm reduction and human rights, to guide their work. This document provided a basis for discussion of the pros and cons of these approaches. This was achieved by reviewing the ways harm reduction strategies and rights-based frameworks have been developed in various regions of the world, clarifying terms, noting strengths and weaknesses, and finding common ground for future work.

Their data spotlight – HIV Philanthropy for Sex Workers – was featured in the 2019 Spring Funder Forum in which FOSTA-SESTA’s impact on sex workers’ ability to self-organise and self-fund was discussed by sex worker leadership at HIPS and Colective Intercultural TRANSgradiendo.

A personal reflection by African feminist Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah.