Taking small steps: Sensitising the police through male sex workers’ community-led advocacy in Nairobi, Kenya

ABSTRACT

Kenyan sex worker-led organisations (SWLOs) often play a key role in the national HIV response. Accounts of these organisations frequently focus on their community-led approaches to promote sexual health. This paper addresses sensitisation, an underexplored but significant activity in the political agency of sex workers (SWs). Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a male SWLO in Nairobi, we examine how male SWs strategically use their position in the national HIV response to create spaces of police sensitisation. Taking police sensitisation as a manifestation of community-led advocacy and a ‘politics of small steps’, we examine how SWs respond to, resist and remake the political landscape of police violence. The strategy supports SWs in changing existing power relationships between themselves and the police, albeit within the confines of a criminalising legal system. The analysis of sensitisation practices supports a reimagining of SWLOs that stresses their political agency in the production of new political spaces and expands the focus on African SWLOs beyond HIV work to their political activities, which advance SWs’ health, rights and social justice.

KEYWORDS:

• male sex workers
• sex worker-led organisations
• sensitisation
• police violence
• political agency

Introduction

On a chilly Saturday morning, I am attending a police-sensitisation activity, organised by a male sex worker-led organisation [SWLO] based in Nairobi’s urban margins. We are at a police station where officers are notorious for their brutal interactions with male sex workers. Because of their involvement in sex work, many of them, for various reasons, have ended up here more than once. Today is different. A group of more than 30 young men gathered early in the morning. They decorated the fences surrounding the precinct with banners with texts such as ‘Educate, Engage, Empower: Let’s keep the light on’, and ‘Hands up for HIV prevention: Leave no one behind’. Afterwards, the men split up in small groups and embarked on different cleaning tasks. People who live and work in the surrounding informal settlements and who happened to walk by watched them picking up trash, sweeping the floors with traditional grass brooms and cleaning the offices and empty cells with soap and water. As it is Saturday morning, only a few police officers are on duty. Those who were around came outside, observed and, in some cases, chatted with them. After an hour or two, the organisation’s advocacy officer gathered the men and the police officers together. He expressed gratitude to the officers and sex workers for being present on this special day, and especially for taking the time to meet each other at this sensitisation activity. After a round of applause, two of the organisations’ staff members walked up to the group, carrying a desk that they placed in front of a high-ranking police officer. The advocacy officer walked up to the desk and, while turning to the police officers, explained its function. It was a ‘GBV [gender-based violence] desk’, which the organisation wished to donate to the police station to improve male sex workers’ treatment during gender-based violence cases in the future. (First author’s field notes, slightly edited for brevity and clarity.)

This vignette illustrates a ‘sensitisation’ activity organised by a male sex worker-led organisation (SWLO) in Nairobi, which uses this strategy to create partnerships with the police to tackle all-too-common police violence. Nairobi’s sex workers (SWs) share their plight with SWs globally, whose experiences of violence also result from their highly stigmatised and marginalised position in society (Bjønness et al., forthcoming; Decker et al., 2015). In many African countries, police officers are among the main perpetrators of violence against SWs (Aidsfonds-STI AIDS Netherlands, 2018; Scorgie et al., 2013). Levels of police violence are highest in countries such as Kenya where criminalisation of sex work and same-sex sexual practices creates a dangerous space of impunity, increasing SWs’ vulnerability while simultaneously offering no way to access police assistance when needed (Platt et al., 2018). ¹ The SWLO examined in this paper uses sensitisation to increase SWs’ ability to safely manoeuvre in this dangerous space of impunity.

The academic literature describes ‘sensitisation’ as a psychological strategy to raise awareness and challenge negative attitudes (Duby et al., 2019; Pavlish et al., 2012). The strategy echoes the ‘contact’ hypothesis, where the existence of more personal relationships between individuals or groups, either through face-to-face conversations or hearing testimonials, demystifies and dispels misinformation and generates empathy, which in turn reduces stigma and prejudice (Allport, 1954; Brewer & Miller, 1984). Sensitisation is a significant yet underexplored activity in Kenyan SWLOs’ political agency, which in this paper refers to SWs’ capacity to advance their own health, rights and social justice through transformative activities.

The global public-health literature on African SWLOs to date has primarily focused on activities to promote sexual health, particularly related to HIV. A small number of academics and African SW rights groups have reported on African SWLOs’ political efforts and their attempts to change legal and policy frameworks (Česnulytė, 2017; KESWA, 2018; Mgbako, 2016). These studies highlight advocacy activities oriented towards the Kenyan state in general (and specific ministries or governing bodies in particular), but activities to combat stigma and vindicate these workers’ human rights remain underexplored. While the literature does discuss SWs’ political agency, the discussions are usually limited to those activities that fall into the general definition of advocacy (namely protests and demonstrations) and the claiming of rights through lobbying (Chateauvert, 2013; Doezema, 2005). We argue that existing academic work pays little attention to what we call ‘advocacy on the ground’, which is less visible but nonetheless equally important and subsequently can contribute to SWLOs achieving their objectives and goals. Sensitisation is one on-the-ground activity.

This paper contributes to reimagining the political agency of SWs and their organisations by providing new perspectives on SWs’ political practices in Africa and furthering scholarship on urban SW politics from the ground. Several authors have examined how SW-led collectives address police violence and recognise the importance of positive partnerships between SWs and police (Crofts & Patterson, 2016; Evans et al., 2019; Khan et al., 2019; Reza-Paul et al., 2012). These studies also demonstrate how SW-led collectives engage with local police officers to challenge stigmatised notions of such work and to structurally alter the risk environment where SWs operate (Biradavolu et al., 2009; Punyam et al., 2012). Most of these studies, however, are concerned with SWLOs that were established in India or, in some cases, by external agents as part of wider HIV-prevention strategies. This paper is among the first to illustrate the processes and procedures of an African SWLO to initiate and maintain such partnerships with the police.

Analysing SWs’ sensitisation activities allow for furthering the discussion of what constitutes political agency and the position and content of advocacy. In this paper, we expand the concept of advocacy to include what Korac (2006) has defined as a ‘politics of small steps’. She defines these small steps as seemingly marginal activities that nonetheless contribute to longer-term processes. In our case, the SWs acquired more autonomy and control during police encounters, albeit within the confines of a criminalising and repressive legal regime. While police sensitisation conceptualised as small steps might not evoke immediate change, together these steps can challenge the status quo and remake the political landscape of police violence. This scenario contrasts with what Abu-Lughod (1990) has called a romantic understanding of resistance, characterised as large-scale, collective and organised rebellions.

In the following, we first discuss the conceptualisation of sensitisation in the context of public health, as this is the academic field where discussions and research on sensitisation in relation to sex work are the most visible. After describing the setting and methods, we briefly explore male SWs’ experiences of police violence. We then dive further into SWs’ understanding and practice of the police-sensitisation strategy, the different spaces of sensitisation the SWLO uses, and the concerns SWs raised about the strategy’s efficacy. We conclude that police sensitisation as a politics of small steps produces new political spaces, part of SWs’ pragmatic efforts to improve their overall well-being and to vindicate their rights both now and in the future.

Sensitisation: From health to politics

In the literature on HIV and public global health, sensitisation is often presented as an effective intervention to challenge health-care workers’ stigmatising attitudes and behaviours towards key populations² and is increasingly part of international HIV programmes (Duby et al., 2019). Health workers’ sensitisation is often seen as an effective way to decrease HIV risk in the context of sex work. There is also a growing recognition that an adverse relationship exists between police behaviours and practices and the impact this relationship has on HIV risk among SWs (Crofts & Patterson, 2016). For example, police officers often detain or arrest SWs on charges related to sex work because they have condoms. Police harassment thus hampers SWs’ use of condoms and leads to hurried condom negotiations. HIV programmes increasingly include a sensitisation component to promote engagement between SWs and police officers. During such sensitisation activities, key group members provide police officers with information and explain the importance of non-discriminatory services.

Previous evaluations of police sensitisation in HIV programmes have shown how SWs have experienced reduced police harassment and violence (Biradavolu et al., 2009; Punyam et al., 2012) and have reported that sensitisation sessions can promote police cooperation for HIV prevention among SWs (Moore et al., 2014). But because most such studies have examined police sensitisation as a way to reach HIV projects’ broader objectives, the impact of such sensitisation strategies for key organisations’ political agency remains unexplored. Indeed, our respondents often referred to police sensitisation as community-led advocacy, because sensitisation aims to generate long-term and structural political and social change. This situation contrasts with the way sensitisation is usually used in HIV programmes, which often organise one-off single events or workshops to diminish risk and increase HIV prevention (e.g. Duby et al., 2019). Using the sensitisation approach, SWs strive for continuity and bring together numerous activities, such as building informal relationships with supportive police officers and establishing workshops and community clean-ups, most of which occur outside formalised programmes and NGO bureaucracies. SWs have thus transformed this intervention, which initially originated in the health sector, into a political ‘small step’ whose aim is to rework, reorder and undermine the structural constraints that affect male SWs’ everyday living and working conditions.

Setting

The Kenyan Penal Code criminalises male SWs on the grounds of same-sex sexual relationships and involvement in activities associated with sex work. Male SWs experience intersecting marginalisation associated with poverty, sex work and perceived or actual homosexuality. Poverty is often a key motive for involvement in sex work and influences other decisions SWs make, as is the case for most African SWs (Mgbako, 2016). Hegemonic gender and religious norms invoke tremendous hatred and fear towards sexual minorities, leading to various forms of discrimination and exclusion (van Klinken, 2018). The men in this study experienced daily the intersection between homosexuality and sex work and its violent outcomes. Nonetheless, male SWs form an integral part of Nairobi’s urban landscape, especially in the central business district and Westlands (a high-income district). At night, numerous SWs of both genders sell their services at bars, clubs and hotels, and, particularly for male SWs, through websites and online dating apps (see also Woensdregt & Nencel, 2020).

Although SWs in Kenya continue to be a marginalised population, since 2009, Kenya’s SWLOs have gained prominence in the national HIV response (van Stapele et al., 2018). They have used this political space to collaborate with national government bodies such as the National Aids Control Council (NACC) and the National AIDS & STI Control Programme (NASCOP) to develop SW-friendly policies and guidelines. Paradoxically, despite the Kenyan Ministry of Health’s recognition of SWs as partners, outside the realm of HIV, the state and its institutions do not seek out SWLOs for partnerships and collaboration. Structural violence against SWs prevails (Česnulytė, 2017).

The SWLO involved in our project was established in 2009. The organisation originally started under the moniker of support to HIV-positive men because the group could not be associated with the illegality of sex work. This guise allowed them to develop their work on the collective experiences of SWs, including systemic inequities and injustices, criminalisation, stigma and other forms of structural violence. The urgency to form a sex worker-led collective arose from growing awareness of the need to mobilise to claim social/political recognition as SWs in Kenyan society. The SWLO has experience in community-based health-care delivery for male SWs and other men who have sex with men in Nairobi. While other Kenyan organisations focus on men who have sex with men, this organisation is the only one to focus specifically on male SWs. The organisation provides comprehensive HIV service delivery through its clinic, including free HIV testing and treatment and the provision of condoms, lubricants and pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP). The organisation reaches 5000 men each year, particularly through peer education, health outreach, support groups and HIV-related counselling. The organisation established a community drop-in centre that is a safe space and central hub for the distribution of condoms, information and educational/communication materials. Over the years, the activities have expanded to include outreach and advocacy addressed to gender-based violence (GBV), community-based research and, recently, mental health. The group receives funding from several international and national development organisations.

Methods

This article draws on nine months’ worth of ethnographic research conducted by the first author during 2018–2019. The data presented in this paper is part of a larger qualitative research project under the responsibility of the second author, which investigates how the international development-aid system enables and/or obstructs the political role of community-based organisations in Nairobi.³ The second author collaborated with the SWLO in previous research projects and invited the group to be part of this project as well. Both authors identify as women.

Ethnographic research implies that much of the data that is collected occurs in a natural setting, which is characterised by the inability to predict what will happen, who will be present and what the daily routine will entail (i.e. Herbert, 2000). Hence, the meaning participants give to their daily lives serves as the foundation for the researchers’ assertions. The research activities primarily consisted of participant observations at the organisation’s drop-in centre and deep ‘hanging out’ (Geertz, 1998). Participants included the SWLO’s management team, other staff members including paralegals, and regular members. The SWLO’s management team provided consent to conduct participant observations. In addition, informed consent in ethnography is an ongoing process and not a one-off event. By reminding the members at different moments of the objectives of our presence gave them the possibility to withdraw their participation if they preferred not to take part.

The first author was involved with everyone present at the organisation but particularly with a core group of 30 men, with different degrees of intensity and frequency. This involvement was complemented by the first author’s participation in 20 community-led research⁴ sessions and semi-structured interviews with 18 members. The interviews were arranged by the organisation, and participants received 500 KES (US$5) in reimbursements.

This paper’s analysis is based on field notes derived from participant observations at the drop-in centre and community-led research sessions. These observations were supplemented with member interviews and the observation of two police-sensitisation sessions, one that took place at the office and the other at a police station. During the early days of fieldwork, we realised that police sensitisation was key to the SWLO’s operational realities, which motivated the first author to include the subject during informal conversations with the participants and during formal research activities. The research sessions and interviews with members were held at the SWLO’s office and were conducted in English. The interviews followed a semi-structured topic guide and addressed a range of topics, including members’ experiences with the SWLO and its services and political activities.

Thematic analysis was applied to the data, through which we examined themes and patterns of meaning regarding police sensitisation. The first author conducted code development, coding and data analysis. The codes were developed both inductively (those that emerged from the data) and deductively, based on the questions in the interview guides. Both authors reviewed, reorganised and discussed the results together. This study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The final draft of the manuscript was reviewed and approved by the SWLO.

Findings

Male sex workers and their relationships with the police

In Nairobi, municipal police officers often raid SWs’ workplaces, called hotspots, and engage in arbitrary and illegitimate arrests. SWs can avoid arrest by bribing the police with money or sexual services (Aidsfonds-STI AIDS Netherlands, 2020; KESWA, 2018). The Kenyan police force is known to be corrupt not just for SWs but for the public in general as well as violent towards other marginalised groups, including male youth in the ghettos (van Stapele, 2019). Police repression of male SWs is intensified by moral policing of gender and sexuality, which has been reported in other African countries in the context of sex work and lesbian (L), gay (G), bisexual (B) and transgender (T+) persons (e.g. Giwa et al., 2020). A recent study asserts that male SWs in Nairobi experience police violence differently from their female counterparts, and men are more often arrested and forced to pay bribes of money or sex (Aidsfonds-STI AIDS Netherlands, 2020). In general, however, a lack of statistical evidence makes confirmation of this situation difficult. The male SWs in this study subjectively felt that they were treated differently from the general population, but also from female SWs, because they were male and gay. As Melvin⁵ explained:

You don’t want to meet the police … I’d rather meet a thief than a policeman, because a thief won’t care about my sexuality. He’ll just pick my phone and go away, but a policeman will harass you because you’re a sex worker, and [if you’re] a male sex worker, he’ll harass you and even torture you.

Some of the men were arrested on the grounds of talking to other men, which evidenced to the police their homosexuality. In addition to the arbitrary character of arrests, respondents explained that police officers used homophobic language and insults during arrest and incited further violence towards them by other inmates. In this regard, Baba Flava explained what happened when he was arrested at the hotspot where he usually worked:

They were just asking me stupid questions: ‘Why do you want to have sex with men when we have so many women around? Why men? In fact, we want to take you inside and make sure that you’re fucked properly by those inmates’.

In general, ongoing tensions between the police and SWs foster a culture of distrust and suspicion, and respondents often referred to police as their enemies. Few SWs report discrimination and other forms of violence by police officers. The male SWs in this study were wary of lodging a formal complaint for fear of police harassment and violence, and even arrest on grounds of their involvement in sex work and homosexuality. A paralegal worker explained:

There are many men who experience violence by the police, but almost as many decide to leave it there since they’re afraid it will result in problems in the future.

As the above quotes illustrate and our observations confirmed, police officers’ violent and repressive acts towards SWs were problematic and difficult to challenge in this criminalised and homophobic context. Yet, while feeling largely powerless as individuals, the SWs believed in the collective strategy of police sensitisation. In our discussions about effective strategies to improve police officers’ attitudes towards SWs, almost without exception, everyone answered ‘sensitisation’. Our interlocuters generally attributed any positive engagement with the police to sensitisation activities. The men emphasised the need for ideational and ideological exchanges regarding existing ideas about homosexuality to assure their sexual and labour rights. The SWLO thus developed the police-sensitisation strategy to challenge the prevailing status quo and to reduce police violence.

Even before the commencement of police sensitisation, the SLWO used other tactics to improve SW/police relationships. The staff, particularly paralegals, maintained good relationships with a few supportive police officers. The paralegals often referred to these police officers as their friends and explained that most of them identified as gay, albeit not openly, and some were clients of the SWs. These officers were pivotal in making the police sensitisation a success. They had become gatekeepers who bridged the distance between the SW and police community. During our fieldwork, these officers often visited the SWLO offices to help plan the sensitisation activities. Through these officers, members of the SWLO accessed the police units they wanted to invite. These police officers thus were positive outliers in an otherwise largely repressive institution.

Police sensitisation

The SWLO’s sensitisation strategy is fuelled by the idea that instances of police violence are driven by the same moralistic forms of violence committed by other members of society towards SWs. Omosh, a staff member, summarised the purpose of sensitisation:

Sensitisation is basically humanising. I think before people actually accept that someone is gay, they need to see them as human, and most people don’t, honestly. So actually [sensitisation means] to get them to the point where they’ll look at me and see a Kenyan and not a gay man.

Omosh’s words illustrate the essence of the objective of sensitisation: to disband existing societal norms about sex work and homosexuality within society’s moral fabric. Police sensitisation hence may be understood as SWs’ attempt to target the symbolic context of everyday life (Mannell et al., 2014), consisting of the meanings, ideologies and worldviews that circulate in society about sexual minorities in general, and homosexuals specifically. Indeed, our interviews showed that male SWs experienced their societal position and existing stereotypes as humiliating and dehumanising. As Baru Baru, a member, said:

[These] people think the only thing we do is [have] sex … They don’t understand that there’s a person behind [our homosexuality].

The men considered sensitisation a means to work towards their inclusion in society. From the respondents’ perspectives, sensitisation facilitated breaking with the stereotypical pathological and perverse portrayals of SWs and helped the police to see them as ‘real’ people. As Faruk, a staff member, explained:

That’s why we invite them, sensitise them, in order for them to know that gay people are there and are normal people, because they think [gay people] are people who are weird, who are mad.

While members primarily understood police sensitisation as a means to humanise SWs for the police, conversely, the SWLO’s management recognised the strategy’s potential to humanise the police for SWs. From the SWLO’s standpoint, this was a necessary step to increase the SWs’ willingness to report cases of violence to the police. This strategy required an ideational change regarding the negative associations they had with the police as an institution to a positive association based on values such as assistance and protection.

The management team were also aware of the urgent need to obtain more evidence so they could systematically monitor violence. The consequences of the lack of this type of evidence were painfully felt in 2019, when Kenya’s highest court refused to repeal the law criminalising homosexuality due to a lack of evidence in proving discrimination and other forms of violence against the LGBT+ community in Kenya (Heinrich Böll Stiftung, 2019).

The SWLO also used sensitisation strategically as a form of public relations. The attending police officers became familiar with the SWLO’s work, emphasising the work they did to promote sexual health for men and the significant role the organisation played in the national HIV response. A staff member explained:

In Kenya, you have to be smart, you have to use the health approach. If you start talking about your rights and say that sex work is work, no one will listen to you.

In terms of a health approach, the organisation increased SWs’ legitimacy and claimed their rights. The organisation also provided financial incentives⁶ to make attending more attractive. The money, usually between 500 and 1000 KES (5–10 dollars), was made available by a partner NGO, and allowed the organisation to serve nyama choma⁷ lunch for the police officers and organisation members.

Spaces of sensitisation

Today the organisation is hosting a police sensitisation. I’m sitting in the boardroom, together with around 30 members and ten male police officers. While the SWs and police officers sat separately at first, the facilitator asked everyone to mingle. The seating is now more mixed. As a means of introduction, the facilitator has asked everyone, including me, to share their name, working location, and his favourite sex position and the last time he had sex. I’ve become used to the questions, and have heard them more often at meetings amongst sex workers, but I can tell from their faces that for the police officers, they’re rather unconventional. At first, the police officers showed surprise and looked at each other, and some giggled. Nonetheless, one by one the members and police officers have stood up, looked around the room and answered the questions, and soon everyone was laughing and talking to each other. (First author’s field notes)

This field note excerpt provides a peek into a sensitisation workshop organised at the SWLO’s offices. After one of these sessions, Alehandro, a staff member, explained that the SWLO’s primary aim was to have informal and fun interactions between SWs and police. Rather than adhering to a strict programme, the SWLO created a space for open and respectful conversations and a forum where people felt free to ask questions. The introduction round described above functioned as an ice-breaker and indeed opened the floor for police officers and community members to talk and share their experiences.

During one workshop, some of the police officers asked the SWs about their homosexuality and why they engaged in sex with other men. In response to these questions, the facilitator wrote ‘LGBTQI’ [LGBT plus ‘queer’ and ‘intersex’] on a whiteboard and subsequently explained the meaning of each letter in this acronym, making sure to emphasise the similarities they shared with heterosexuals. He discussed the idea that sexual preference was inborn for heterosexuals and homosexuals alike. His entire explanation was intended to make sexual diversity more comprehensible for the participants. The SWs followed up the facilitators’ answer and stressed that ‘We are all Kenyans’ and that ‘The LGBTQI community are your children, your sisters, your uncles’.

While the aim of such answers was to decrease the ‘othering’ and alienation of homosexuals, these responses simultaneously had a powerful underlying message that debunked the commonly held idea that homosexuality is not part of Kenyan culture but was imported from the West. The police officers primarily showed curiosity about the subject of sexual minorities and their motives to engage in sex work, while the SWs addressed the police violence and arbitrary arrests they had experienced. But rather than reflecting on the role that police officers often play in violent interactions with SWs, most officers blamed police violence and lack of reporting on the criminalisation of sex work and to SWs’ behaviour. The officers felt that SWs incited their own arrests because they frequently tried to run away. They tried to persuade the SWs that they could report cases to the police if they would only overcome their own fears.

In general, the SWLO’s approach to the practice of police sensitisation is experimental and has no standardised agenda; each session is approached iteratively. During the course of our study, staff members frequently discussed the approach together and with the members, as well as with other SW activists looking for different strategies. One result of these discussions was the police precinct clean-up, described earlier. By providing these voluntary services, the SWLO aimed to generate a positive image of male SWs among the police. As one member explained, they did this ‘because it helps [the police officers] see [that] these homosexuals can also do something good, like cleaning’. Another man said it ‘helps to tell them [the police] we are not animals and to try and prove to them that it’s possible to co-exist’.

Mgbako (2016) referred to this strategy among African SW activists as positive community messaging. When [author] asked one senior staff member about the purpose of cleaning police stations, he laughed and replied that as the Nairobian police stations lacked funding, they appreciated the offer. Cleaning the precincts also gave the organisation relatively easy access to the police premises. The community clean-up was a low-key, fun social activity that supported members in reimagining their relationships and image of the police.

Staff and members alike considered the sensitisation activities to be empowering for SWs. The idea of SWs engaging with their perpetrators and taking the lead in establishing more positive relationships was empowering. This situation may also be read as a momentary shift in power configurations between SWs and police, giving the former more political agency than might appear at first glance.

Equally, the symbolic significance of the ‘GBV desk’ mentioned in the introduction must also be noted. The sex workers’ donation of a desk to specifically address this type of violence was a way of symbolically redressing the limited access they had to police assistance and possibilities to report cases of violence. The desks were specifically designated for police officers to become specialised in GBV in the context of male sex work and other forms of same-sex sexual relationships. The SWLO donated several GBV desks to precincts around the city. The management team recognised that the effectiveness would increase if the donations were accompanied by training for the officers to specialise in this domain. While these trainings had not yet materialised at the time of the study due to lack of time and resources, the SWs’ symbolic act of donating GBV desks demonstrated their efforts to remake the political landscape of police violence.

Sensitisation is not cleaning

The SWLO’s staff and members we talked to, as well as activists from the SW and LGBT+ communities, all praised the police-sensitisation strategy, many considering it a pioneering strategy to improve relationships between SWs and police for the future. Yet its positive impact was not appreciated by all.

Some staff members felt that, compared to before, the sensitisation sessions had enabled members to more easily report incidents of violence and for police officers to address violence. Indeed, some members directly linked their positive interactions with police officers to the sensitisation activities. For instance, Karis recalled:

Once I was with a friend, and we were going to town. It was late at night. My friend was carrying lubes and condoms in his bag, so the police asked, ‘Why are you carrying these things?’ And they asked about that lube, [saying] ‘What is this?’ And we said it’s a gel for a massage, and one of the officers smiled and called us aside. He was like, ‘You’re from [the SWLO director’s] place?’ We said yes, and he was like, ‘You just go’.

Other people we talked to were less positive about the outcomes of these sessions. Some members were dissatisfied because, despite the police sensitisation, SWs continued to face arrest and police violence. Many believed in the underlying principles of the sensitisation strategy but also felt that ‘sensitisation is not cleaning’ and doubted its effectiveness in increasing police awareness. Several police officers attended not because they wanted to learn more but because they would receive a per diem and a meal. While some participating police officers showed curiosity and willingness to listen to the male SWs, many others just sat there passively.

SWLO members were also sceptical regarding the breadth and reach of the sensitisation activities. In general, the SWLO reaches an average of 120 police officers annually. The group aims for at least one sensitisation activity in the office and organises the others at police stations around Nairobi. But because officers frequently rotate between cities and districts, the members felt that a more structural approach was needed. The SWLO’s staff recognised these limitations but stressed the long-term character of this strategy. From the staff members’ perspective, the sensitisation activities were a means to an end rather than an end in itself. They recognised that these stand-alone sensitisation activities would fail to change things directly; rather, they saw them as a way to build momentum. Dani, a staff member, said:

[The police’s] attitudes are changing slowly but surely. Attitudes don’t change overnight; change only happens with time.

Staff members thus conceptualised sensitisation as one step in a politics of small steps, while the members, who regularly and directly experienced repressive police practices and violence, wanted quick results and were understandably impatient.

Members were also aware that the effects of the police sensitisation were structurally limited by the existing laws that criminalised sex work and homosexuality. Chuna said:

[Sensitisation] doesn’t help at all. The police just come for the money and pretend they hear us, but they can do nothing to change the law. It’s still a criminal act … When decriminalisation passes, then it might be a bit safe.

Another member explained how decriminalisation would give the organisation an additional means to hold police officers accountable. He said:

They won’t love you, because you can’t force people to love you, but they will fear attacking you because they’ll fear being arrested.

Staff members emphasised that the police-sensitisation strategy was part of a comprehensive political strategy encompassing activities on different political levels. The police-sensitisation activities were conceptualised as on-the-ground, community-led advocacy practices that complemented advocacy activities targeted towards governmental politics, such as strategic litigation to decriminalise sex work and same-sex sexual relationships.

We should mention that, even though the SWLO members were aware of the limitations associated with sensitisation activities, they nonetheless continually tried to improve the sensitisation contents, engage more police officers and lobby for sensitisation to be structurally included in the police academy’s curriculum. The first visits to the police academy in Kenya were made at the time of this writing, in February 2021 (personal communication paralegal, first author).

Discussion and conclusion: Police sensitisation as a politics of small steps

In this paper, we have discussed police sensitisation as ‘advocacy on the ground’ and a form of SWs’ political agency that often goes unnoticed in the sex work literature. The paper illustrates how police sensitisation, as a ‘politics of small steps’, creates opportunities for long-term and structural changes in SWs’ lived realities of police violence. Police sensitisation is not an isolated occurrence, however, but a small step integrated into numerous steps that constitute organisations’ broader political agenda. Together these steps culminate in a comprehensive political strategy to incite structural change and vindicate the sexual and labour rights of male SWs.

As we have illustrated, male SWs in Nairobi have adapted the public-health conceptualisation of sensitisation and transformed it into a modern political strategy. Their strategy goes beyond the idea of consciousness-raising and changing existing attitudes, as previous literature on sensitisation has often described (e.g. Duby et al., 2019). Both the communicative sensitisation spaces and cleaning activities put the contact hypothesis into motion. Indeed, the SWLO uses sensitisation activities to foster personal relationships between SWs and the police in an attempt to re-humanise otherwise objectified groups from each other’s perspectives. The cleaning activity, particularly unique, allows SWs to gain access to the precinct and as such brings together SWs and the police in an otherwise conflict-driven environment.

Underlying the uniqueness of these activities and their potential to put change into motion is its community-led character. This characterisation means that it has been designed and is implemented by ‘the community’, as SW activists in Nairobi often say. Studies among SW communities have recognised the power of engaged communities and have demonstrated community-led organisations’ ability to challenge unequal power relations, including those with police (Basu & Dutta, 2008; Khan et al., 2019).

The national HIV response in Nairobi has recently started to include police sensitisation. According to one senior staff member of the SWLO, the uptake of these activities in government programmes may be partly attributed to the community-led advocacy the SW community has done with government officials. SW activists nonetheless remain critical of how this programme is implemented because rather than using existing community-led sensitisation strategies (including community expertise and networks), the national HIV response uses a top-down approach to select police officers and the precincts to work with. SW activists contend that this top-down approach is less effective and sustainable because it fails to meaningfully include the community.

When we consider the power of sensitisation and its significance in the politics of sex work, the strategies also contribute to SWs’ capacity to reimagine their political agency in terms of being in control and able to make a difference. Sensitisation is powerful in its potential to challenge existing social orders and power relations. While these newly formed but fragile partnerships contribute to alleviating some existing tensions, they cannot substitute for the human rights-based law reform advocated by the SW community. In the absence of structural change, SWs’ sensitisation efforts should be understood as pragmatic: as a way to improve relationships and reduce police violence, both now and in the future. The extent to which sensitisation brings about actual attitudinal change in police, both individually and as an institution, remains to be seen. More research is needed to gather evidence on the long-term impact of sensitisation.

This paper illustrates that, despite the positive outcomes of sensitisation activities, they can do little to change the current system of power that the police wield over SWs and their right to take actions against these workers. Kenyan legislation in general does not provide any laws to protect SWs. SWs have virtually no means to hold police officially accountable for their actions, so encountering a ‘decent’ police officer is a matter of good luck or of individual goodwill. In this legal environment, sensitisation addresses the symptoms but cannot address the root causes of police violence against male SWs. From a global public-health perspective, reducing police violence against SWs will only be achievable by taking SWLOs’ community structures seriously and by incorporating SWs’ expertise, networks and strategies into future interventions. The community-led advocacy strategies used by SWs make such people better equipped to create and sustain partnerships with police than state- or NGO-run programmes.

In summary, the decriminalisation of same-sex sexual practices and the activities associated with sex work will be necessary to create a socio-political environment that is less conducive to repressive police practices and can mitigate conflicts and violence between SWs and the police.

The analysis of SWs’ police sensitisation as a politics of small steps supports a reimagining of SWLOs that stresses their political agency and production of new political spaces as a way to improve their sexual and labour rights. Such analysis expands the focus on African SWLOs beyond HIV work to include political activities that advance SWs’ health, rights and social justice.

Acknowledgements

We thank staff and members of the SWLO for welcoming us into their organisation and community, and their time and support in working with us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from NWO-WOTRO Science for Global Development under Grant W.08.311.106.

Notes

1 Kenyan law criminalises sex work (and related behaviours) and same-sex sexual practices through the Penal Code and through county by-laws.

2 SWs, drug users and men who have sex with men are key populations for HIV prevention and treatment because these groups are disproportionately affected.

3 This study was undertaken as part of a research project entitled ‘Towards Inclusive Partnerships: The Political Role of Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) and the Official Development Aid (ODA) System in Nairobi, Kenya’, between December 2015 and October 2019, supported by NWO-WOTRO (Science for Global Development Funds), the Hague, the Netherlands.

4 This is a community-led research method ‘for the purpose of producing useful results and achieving positive changes in order to achieve locally relevant and meaningful outcomes that ultimately lead to sustainable social change’ (HOYMAS, 2019, p. iii).

5 All informants’ names have been anonymised for this study, and their quotes have been slightly edited for clarity. The pseudonyms were provided by our interlocuters.

6 This practice is not unusual (and has even become expected by those attending meetings, trainings and the like), as per diems, transport money and lunches are provided by almost all NGOs that offer training or invite organisational representatives to meetings.

7 A national Kenyan dish of grilled goat meat.