About Us

The “super group” which gave birth to VOOV was a task team for sex workers that worked with the Ministry of Health in addressing the health needs of sex workers. At the super group, each hotspot (four geographic focus areas) was represented by two sex workers from all the four regions of the country. The super group met monthly to discuss issues of sex workers from the different hotspots. This platform was also used for capacity building for the sex workers on topics that were chosen by them. The super group meetings started in 2014 and were hosted by the Ministry of Health Swaziland National Aids Programme, HC3 and later FHI360. The birth of VOOV was formulated and crafted in these meetings. FHI360 and Pact played a pivotal role, by providing venue, meals, transport and technical support for the meetings. Currently VOOV is hosted by PACT. VOOV is a member of ASWA and NSWP, and the organisation conducts national activities, funded through ASWA and NSWP.

Voice of Our Voices was formed in 2017 by 56 sex workers who come from the four regions of Eswatini, who had faced challenges including access to health services, human rights violation from members of the public, clients and uniform forces also the violence that comes from the sex workers among themselves. These sex workers committed to come together to influence change in their work spaces through supporting each other whenever challenges come up.

1. Enhance knowledge and skills of vulnerable women who are disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS, to protect and care for themselves and those affected;
2. Strengthen linkages between service providers and vulnerable women to collaboratively provide information on HIV and AIDS, and quality services;
3. Strengthen partnerships among women disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS to address their needs and impact of development challenges including HIV, SRHR and poverty.
To ensure the promotion and protection of rights of sex workers, VOOV conducts advocacy in several fora including national CEDAW reporting, HIV prevention, Technical Working Group (TWG) and other national and international platforms.

Our organisation sits on the Key Populations Technical Working Group where all issues related to key populations and access to health services are discussed. The organisation is currently working with the Ministry and other key population organisations in sensitising health care workers, the police, religious leaders and other community leaders on issues of key populations. The organisation is currently implementing the insika yakusasa project sub-granted by Pact, which focuses on support for orphaned and vulnerable children. VOOV also works closely with the children of sex workers in the project. The aim of the project is to assist VOOV to learn how to implement, and assists children of sex workers with birth registration, educational support, parenting sessions and economic strengthening for sex workers. The organisation does not provide clinical services but promotes access to services through outreach work.

The service package offered by VOOV includes outreach work with sex workers to encourage sex workers to take up HIV testing and linking them to testing, care and treatment services. We also offer distribution of commodities such as condoms and lubricants, including to clients. VOOV does outreach work and FHI360 provides the clinical component and a mobile clinic.

VOOV works to address challenges in delivery of health services for sex workers by addressing mistrust of health care system and concerns regarding loss of income as a result of illness and arrests. We create safe spaces for sharing information about sexual behaviour, substance and drug use. Sex workers are fully involved in designing our programmes, in decision making for the organisation and are the ones who lead the implementation.

VOOV work to promote equal rights for all, under the human rights for all project funded by the EU civil society programme. VOOV promotes health and human rights, but this is an area where there is a real lack of focus on sex workers’ rights, to be recognised in the country, which is something VOOV is pushing to cover.

The main task of the group is to represent the members of the hotspots, bring forward their views on how VOOV should operate, and do the programming of each region, as there are some sex workers from rural areas where the approach is not similar to the urban areas. Their tasks include to give information about the situation of their working conditions, health issues on service delivery, and access to justice whenever needed.

Other tasks for the group are to give feedback to the hotspots peers on what our discussions have been about, to teach others how to prevent violence among sex workers and conduct group discussions on income generation aside from sex work, for sustainability. They also take a lead on service delivery for any kind when Voice of Our Voices visits sex work hotspots. Another task was to accompany sex workers to health facilities, which was done voluntarily by both parties, to avoid illnesses as result of not accessing health services in time.

VOOV has trained paralegals who assist sex workers by training them on human rights, assisting them by connecting them to a lawyer who assists should sex workers need a legal expert. Our organisation supports with court hearings, whenever sex workers are arrested for loitering.

A big event that VOOV successfully did recently was conducting a national sex workers’ Indaba (discussion meeting), which 40 stakeholders from different NGOs and government bodies attended. The organisations included COSPE, FHI360, SAFAIDS, social workers from the Deputy Prime Minister’s office, World Vision, PACT, SWAGGA, SWANEPHA, representatives from the Police, Ministry of Health, Justice and the Human Rights Commission. Sex worker communities were invited to voice their views, including on the challenges they face whenever they need to access a service, and the difficulties they face from the public, including with violence and hate crime. Sex workers shared their perspective on the law, human rights violations, and potential resolutions to these problems. The group drew a road map on how to see these improvements, and by conducting the Indaba yearly, this will also help sex workers to get to know one another.

The group has faced many challenges since this initial group came together. As much as we had a common goal, many were lost along the way as a result of migrating to operate in neighbouring countries, where they could work and exercise their rights more easily. Others sadly passed away, which means we are smaller in number today than when we started. Other sex workers gave up on the process of forming the organisation as it seemed to be impossible to them, as a result of the vulnerability we faced each time when we opened our mouths to talk in some places. We had to speak in court whenever we were arrested for loitering, as most of the street-based sex workers are used to being caught and arrested. One day we realised that we must tell people what we are all about, as our work matters and the money we get helps us to solve our problems and earn our living.

The main threat we face now is that in our country, we have a dual system that affects our operation, which is being ruled by the common Dutch law. In Eswatini we have two legal systems: Roman Dutch law and Swati customary law. Both systems are used in the country, Swati customary law is fluid and varies from region to region whereas Roman Dutch is documented in statutes. This type of system often does not favour the constitution. There are five main threats that we face in the organisation. VOOV uses the content of the constitution to advocate for sex workers’ rights: for example, in the constitution we have ‘the right of free movement’, but we are still arrested for the crime of loitering.