In Search of Safety, Negotiating the Everyday Forms of Risk: HIV/AIDS, Criminalization, and Sex Work in the slums of Kampala

Abstract:

There is scant data on the HIV epidemic for commercial sex workers in Kampala. What is known is that one in three commercial sex workers is HIV positive (Vandepitte et. al. 2011: 316). To fully understand the impact of this statistic, it is important to situate this datum within the policy context of Uganda, which criminalizes sex work, as well as connect this context to risk. Whereas various research projects on HIV/AIDS and commercial sex work in African settings have discussed differing forms of individual risk sex workers experience, (Campbell, 2000 and 2003; Wojcicki et al. 2001; Gysels etl al. 2002; and Karim et. al. 1995), risks that are complicated by environmental and structural factors, such as criminalization and stigma, have been understudied (Weitzer, 2005 and Forbes, 2010).

Exploring HIV in relation to multiple and competing factors involving individual, environmental, and structural risks (Shannon et al. 2007) can help elucidate why and how one in three sex workers in Kampala are HIV positive, as well as identify policy and programmatic interventions to address this epidemic. To do this effectively, it is important to describe the risk factors associated with commercial sex work in relation to the specific HIV epidemic sex workers in Kampala are facing; to understand whether or not environmental factors, such as criminalization, influence sex workers’ ability to practice prevention and access care and treatment for HIV/AIDS; and, to describe how social relationships (re)produce risk conditions that have implications for Uganda’s general epidemic.

By providing a descriptive analysis of sex workers’ current risk conditions, their HIV epidemic, and their abilities to manage risk in difficult settings, this research lends itself to exploring the following central question:

How are sex workers managing daily risks associated with HIV/AIDS,

criminalization, and sex work in Kampala City, Uganda?

1) Currently the research setting has been changed. The central tenets of the research project will now be explored in a brothel setting as a result of the destruction of the primary slum location in the original dissertation proposal.

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For more information contact Annet van Geen or Roy Huijsmans