Across sub-Saharan Africa, sex workers continue to live and work under laws that criminalize their existence. These laws claim to protect society, morality, or public order. In reality, they do the opposite. Criminalization fuels violence, deepens inequality, blocks access to justice and health care, and places sex workers at the centre of intersecting human rights violations. Decriminalizing adult sex work is not a radical demand—it is a necessary step toward justice, public health, and sustainable development.
The evidence is overwhelming. Sex workers in sub-Saharan Africa face an HIV risk more than eleven times higher than the general population. Nearly half of all new HIV infections in 2024 occurred among key populations and their partners, including sex workers. Yet access to HIV treatment and prevention services for sex workers remains lower than for the wider population. Criminalization plays a direct role in this disparity: it pushes sex work underground, deters people from seeking care, and empowers harassment, extortion, and violence by law enforcement and others.
Criminalization also strips sex workers of basic labour protections. When sex work is illegal or partially criminalized—as it is in at least 41 countries in the region—sex workers cannot report abuse, organize for safety, or work together without fear of arrest. Violence becomes normalized. Exploitation goes unpunished. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many sex workers were excluded from emergency support and social protection schemes, exposing how deeply criminalization marginalizes those whose labour is deemed unworthy of recognition.
These realities stand in direct contradiction to the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Governments across Africa have committed to ending poverty, reducing inequality, achieving gender equality, and ending AIDS. Yet criminalizing sex work undermines progress toward these very goals. It sabotages SDG 3 on health, SDG 5 on gender equality, SDG 8 on decent work, and SDG 10 on reduced inequalities. You cannot claim to “leave no one behind” while actively criminalizing one of the most marginalized groups in society.
The United Nations Development Programme’s Strategic Plan for 2026–2029 recognizes that inclusive and sustainable development requires dismantling the legal and social barriers that exclude entire populations. Sex workers are among those populations. Human rights cannot be conditional. Access to safety, health care, justice, and dignity must not depend on the type of work a person does.
Despite hostile legal environments, sex worker-led organizations across Africa are already leading the way forward. Through strategic litigation, policy engagement, community organizing, and grassroots advocacy, sex workers have achieved meaningful—if often unrecognized—progress. They have reduced violence, improved access to health services, influenced national policies, and created pathways to justice where none existed before. These are not abstract victories; they are life-saving interventions built from lived experience.
Yet these gains are fragile. Shifting political winds and shrinking donor commitments threaten to roll back progress. This moment demands courage from governments, donors, and institutions: courage to listen to sex workers, to trust their leadership, and to replace punitive laws with evidence-based, rights-affirming policies.
Decriminalization is not about promoting sex work. It is about acknowledging reality and choosing policies that reduce harm rather than compound it. It is about recognizing sex workers as rights-holders, workers, parents, community members, and leaders. It is about building societies that are safer, healthier, and more just for everyone.
Africa’s sex worker movements have shown that change is possible—even under the most restrictive conditions. The question now is whether states and institutions will catch up. Decriminalization is not optional. It is the path forward.
