More and more young people are becoming involved in sex work especially ‘transactional sex’ because of poor economic circumstances, and instead of the authorities helping them to practise safe sex and provide alternatives they demonise them pushing them underground which will only increase the incidence of HIV and AIDS.
This is the view of Miriam Edwards Executive Director of the Guyana Sex Work Coalition, who said she has been travelling throughout Guyana especially to remote areas and has seen the effects of poverty and other social ills.
Given this, she believes, more young women and men will continue to fall into sex work, especially transactional sex where young people do not go out onto the streets to solicit, but take on several partners in order to maintain themselves.
“If you can’t give them an alternative it ain’t mek no sense you push them underground; work with them. You might be surprised that they may change if you work along with them, tell them how to protect themselves, give them an alternative and try to help them in some way either to continue their education or something,” Edwards told the Sunday Stabroek in a recent interview.
She said that is the direction her work takes even though the coalition has financial constraints.
That being said Edwards made it clear that she is “terrible against” trafficking in persons, but if the sex worker goes into the lifestyle by choice or circumstances the authorities need to work with them “instead of harassing them, because you just pushing them to hide and do it…”
And when it was suggested that the young people should be told to abstain and not look at sex as a means of supporting themselves, Edwards quickly dismissed this saying that it is “stupidness” and that “when I talking, I talking about reality, things what happening.”
“You know some parents just waiting for deh children done school fuh leh a man come and tek them and give them some ease, because deh have more children to support,” Edwards said bluntly.
She went on to say it is not that the parents “want to do it but circumstances make them,” and sadly there are many women who are HIV positive and some days they can work and other days they cannot, and the older child might be the only one who can help.
“And they can’t get a job so they might end up dehing with some big man to help brace the house; it is sex work and that is reality,” Edwards said.
Edwards said she is out on the ground and she knows what the reality is with many vulnerable families and the authorities have not wised up to this fact. If young people have to “hide and have sex for money,” she continued, then they would be pushed underground and it can only continue to raise the incidence of HIV among the young.
‘Dirty beddings’
According to Edwards almost half of the country’s sex workers are young people, and more of them are being pushed into this type of lifestyle even though many have CXC subjects with good grades, but they cannot find jobs.
“Some of them may be living with their parents but they need other things and they… might have two or three big men minding them, and this is reality, they have to live,” she explained.
It is in the interior and remote communities where there is the absence of secondary schools and the children are forced to leave school at 11 or 12, she went on, where many times they are forced to be sexually involved with persons who may go into the area to work, just in order to help support the family.
“These are things we do not hear about… you never hear people talk about them but they are happening…” she said.
“I fed up of just the top and the nice part of it and you just looking good, but underneath it dirty; we need to bring out the dirty beddings because this what is happening,” she said.
And she said the parents of the young girls − especially the mothers − would have started having children at a very young age and as such see nothing wrong with their daughters becoming sexually active at a young age.
Further, Edwards said, when young girls go into the interior they are well aware that they are going there to do sex work, and likewise those that leave the interior for the coastal areas know that this is what they would be expected to do. “When this happens then you [the authorities] want to charge people with trafficking in person when you ain’t providing nothing for these young people.”
She is of the view that there is no provision for the young people to economically empower themselves after they are forced to leave school, because their parents cannot afford to send them out of the area to secondary school.
Edwards said she prefers to tell them about protection and how they can protect themselves, because if they are removed from the locations where they are engaged in sex work and nothing is done to educate them or make them economically empowered, they would eventually return to sex work. Because of this, Edwards said her work involves working with the young people to protect themselves and be safe.
She said she has taken in many young girls whom she has removed from the streets, and has helped to send them back to school once they indicate that sex work is not what they want to do.
“If I could give somebody a choice, any young people, whether it is male or female I does try to do that,” she said.
And of more concern for her are the communities in the Berbice River which are predominantly farming communities who at present have no way of selling their produce since the government ferry no longer plies the river. As a result it is difficult to get their produce to New Amsterdam. Some turn to planting marijuana and in some cases both parents may be arrested and jailed, and it will be the children who are left to fend for themselves with the young girls turning to sex work. “These are the realities,” she emphasised.
She explained that many persons believe that it is only those who work on the streets who are sex workers, but transactional sex is the most prevalent form of sex work, with young people being forced to become sexually active with multiple sex partners to maintain themselves or help maintain the home.
‘Harassed’
Meantime, Edwards said sex workers who work on the streets continue to be harassed. Following the murder of sex worker Wesley Holder early last month, Edwards said that some of the persons who work in the area where he was active have expressed fear for their lives and now no longer work late at night.
“But there is always a fear and a challenge for the sex worker whether it be male, female and trans [transsexuals], because when we talk about sex workers people think about women, but we have all these different categories of workers who would be out there,” Edwards said.
She said the workers face challenges not only from the general public but more worryingly from members of the Guyana Police Force who continue to harass them, and that this will not change if the buggery law is not repealed.
“Because of the law [which makes it a crime for a man to have sex with a man] people use that as a weapon against the population to discriminate against them and brutalize them,” she said.
And co-chair of the coalition, Cracey Fernandes, said many times it is because of the level of discrimination that is meted out to men who have sex with men in the labour force that drives many of them to become sex workers.
He said that it is unfortunate that the police who are supposed to be the protectors of citizens are the ones who harass the workers and their clients on the streets. And sometimes it is just the manner in which they approach the workers − many times using profanities − which according to Fernandes “triggers you right there and then.”
Fernandes said while repealing the law would not stop persons from discriminating against the workers it would at best prevent the police from harassing them with impunity.
Fernandes too said that while some workers are on the streets by choice many of them are there because they are forced into this way of life for various reasons. He said in the remote areas there are no jobs and then there is a gender bias against women who will not get a job before a man; in most cases they are underpaid and they then use their bodies to make money.
The coalition was established in 2008, and in 2011 the group opened an office and safe place in Georgetown, and according to Fernandes at this location they offer a range of services to sex workers. At the safe place sex workers can visit and feel free to interact with one another and they can access counselling and free HIV testing. Importantly, they offer hot meals and persons can stay at the location for short periods if they are encountering difficulties.
Edwards added that for anyone who stays temporarily at the location, a social worker is available to work with them, and there have been cases of persons taking their teenagers to be counselled if they are unable to effectively address some of the problems the teenager might be facing.
Fernandes said he is a perfect example of how the coalition has helped, since he is a former prison inmate but now works with vulnerable communities. And he said he has been better able to understand the community and “and I can safely say I have moved from one place to another in terms of respecting people’s human rights…”
Edwards and Fernandes said that the coalition is here to stay, and even though it is now suffering some financial difficulties owing to lack of donor funding they are keeping the building open.
“The coalition is here to stay, even if I have to operate from my home,” Edwards declared.