Widespread vagueness about the U.S. funding guidelines and an anti-prostitution pledge has hurt sex workers, the people who could most benefit from U.S. foreign aid and who are best placed to turn the tide of the epidemic.

But there’s still a travel ban for foreign sex workers. And drug users. Who regard this conference as a second, albeit temporary, home or community. These travel bans could have been lifted for the conference. Other countries have been known to do just that. It’s called …hosting a conference.

Despite the fact that international sex workers were barred and many others couldn’t afford the prohibitively expensive conference registration fee, a number of fierce activists did make it to the IAC.

These policies fail to differentiate between people who have chosen sex work as an income-generating option, and those that have been forced into it against their will. The critical difference is self-determination. Confusing these two categories leads to ineffective antitrafficking efforts and multiple human rights violations.

The immigration bar on sex workers is a disaster for the International AIDS Conference, and it is also a policy that furthers the AIDS crisis. Every day, immigrant women, men, and transgender people who have engaged in commercial sex are barred from seeking immigration status in the United States.

As most delegates began to queue for the IAC’s opening session, a group of about twenty young women, trans people and men successfully interrupted the opening press conference, wearing green Statue of Liberty crowns, sounding vuvuzelas and chanting “No sex workers? No drug users? No IAC!”

Aids activists gathering in Washington DC and Kolkata, India, this week have denounced conditions attached to US global Aids funding, which they say have damaged the response to the epidemic by further marginalising sex workers – among those hardest hit.

Aids activists gathering in Washington DC and Kolkata, India, this week have denounced conditions attached to US global Aids funding, which they say have damaged the response to the epidemic by further marginalising sex workers – among those hardest hit.

Sex workers and their allies have refused to be shut out of the global conversation on HIV/AIDS, staging a six-day alternative conference, the Sex Worker Freedom Festival, now underway in Kolkata, India.

“I’m here to say that sex worker rights are human rights,” said Juniper Fleming, marching with Sex Workers Outreach Project New York City (SWOP-NYC)…