How do organizations understand transactional sex and how does that shape which services they offer?

They shared findings of their research on how these organizations understand transactional sex and which services they offer in response as part of the presentation 'How Do Humanitarian Service Providers Understand Transactional Sex: A mixed methods analysis' during the International Humanitarian Studies Association’s (IHSA’s) 2025 World Conference on Humanitarian Studies.

Understandings of transactional sex shape humanitarian actors’ responses

The stance reflected in the quote above understands transactional sex based on the experience of the people involved, which can range from abuse and exploitation to agency and the relief of generating an income for their household. This broader view differs from the perception that narrowly equates the practice with sexual exploitation or gender-based violence. 

Often framing people either as victim or culprit, without recognizing their complex realities, the second stance leads to a gap between humanitarian organizations’ institutional discourses and the ground realities of people involved in transactional sex.

The ListenH research team from Colombia highlighted that the way in which transactional sex is understood shapes institutional responses. Organizations that associate transactional sex with a violation of moral values focus on assistance and behavioural correction with the implicit message to 'help them stop doing that'. 

Based on the broader view of transactional sex reflected in the quote above, other organizations seek to address people’s specific needs, including services for psychosocial support, sexual and reproductive health, temporary financial support and case management.

International survey on transactional sex among humanitarian actors

These Colombia-focused findings were embedded in a bird’s-eye view based on an international survey with service providers in humanitarian contexts across the world presented by ListenH researcher and leader of the project’s humanitarian workstream Clea Kahn. 

Both her and other panel contributions distinguished understandings of transactional sex that emphasise coercion in individual sexual relations from structural coercions rooted in a context of conflict, impoverishment, xenophobia and gender-based oppression. Katheryn Crespo poignantly summarized that transactional sex '[…] is deeply linked to the social, economic, and gender conditions that many people, especially migrant and trans women, experience in precarious situations'.

Humanitarian studies researcher Jérémie Byenda Muziri presented on transactional sex in internally displaced persons’ camps around Goma, DRC. His presentation 'Is transactional sex in the displaced camps around Goma a strategy or survival mode?' that also emerged from the ListenH project, underlined the different forms of violence that women and girls engaged in transactional sex experience.

Besides the two presentations rooted in country contexts studied by the ListenH project, Shirin Heidari, Principal Investigator of the Liminality Research Consortium at the Geneva Graduate Institute presented findings from the multi-country study on 'Structural Drivers and Gendered Patterns of Transactional Sexual Practices in forced displacement'.