through political and financial support

States should ensure, through political and financial support, that community consultation occurs in
all phases of HIV policy design, programme implementation and evaluation and that community
organizations are enabled to carry out their activities, including in the fields of ethics, law and human
rights, effectively।
Supportive Environments
Environments that support health promotion goals are created through concrete and
effective community action in setting priorities, making decisions, and planning and implementing
strategies to achieve better health. At the heart of this process is the empowerment
of communities—their ownership and control of their own endeavours and destinies61.
the context of sex work, community empowerment involves helping people in sex work
to come together for mutual assistance; removing barriers to full participation; respecting,
protecting and fulfilling human rights; combating stigma and discrimination; and strengthening
partnerships between government, civil society, and community actors to achieve the
most effective HIV responses.
The UN system has long recognized and supported the crucial contributions of community-
based organizations, including organizations of sex workers, towards the development
of innovative and effective HIV responses.62 The Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights emphasises that: “Development strategies should empower citizens, especially
the most marginalized, to articulate their expectations towards the State and other
duty-bearers, and take charge of their own development.”63 In the context of sex work,
community engagement and empowerment requires involving sex workers in the design,
research, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, of policies and programmes that affect
their lives and acknowledging that without their active engagement and involvement
efforts to provide universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support will not
be optimally effective.
Building capacity in sex-worker networks and communities is part of a fundamental
commitment to the protection, promotion and respect of the human rights of sex workers.
Capacity-building includes provision of adequate funding and training for sex-worker
groups to develop and sustain organizational strength and expertise to effectively communicate
and share good practices with each other and externally. Community organizations
working with sex workers have an important role to play in supporting sex workers who
may be difficult for mainstream providers to reach, including undocumented migrants,
street workers and those working in informal sex work settings