In partnership with RENEW, Pride Bhutan, and the Red Purse Network (RPN), SKPA2 – Save the Children Bhutan facilitated a Feminist Leadership Workshop for 22 female sex workers (FSWs) and transgender women (TGW) from 8 to 12 April 2025. The program gave the communities most impacted by HIV and related barriers a transforming space for advocacy, healing, and power-building.
The workshop, which was founded on feminist, trauma-informed, and community-centred principles, addressed important structural obstacles that still jeopardise the rights and well-being of FSWs and TGW in Bhutan, including the criminalisation of sex work, legal recognition issues, cyberviolence, and HIV and healthcare.
Participants took part in promoting mental health and emotional resilience, particularly in demanding and high-stress situations, which require the design of safe spaces and the planning of self-care routines. Participants contributed to intersectionality and oppression-mapping exercises to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying reasons for exclusion.
These exercises looked at how overlapping factors, including gender, occupation, poverty, and identity, work together to limit access to HIV services and legal protection. With the help of the SHIFT advocacy framework, which ensures strategic effect and feasibility, participants created clear, practical campaigns centred on pressing community concerns. These insights served as the basis for enhancing advocacy and leadership skills.
Participants created creative and workable lobbying plans that addressed urgent issues impacting their communities through role-playing activities and case study analysis. These included demands that sex work be decriminalised, that safe exit plans be created for senior female sex workers and older transgender women, that safeguards against cyber-blackmail be put in place, and that HIV and sexual health services be made inclusive. These recommendations, which sought to promote systemic change and protect the rights and dignity of marginalised communities, reflected both strategic thinking and lived realities. The program emphasised that tackling the gendered, health and legal barriers that key populations confront is essential to the success of HIV prevention and care, and that individuals with lived experience must be at the forefront of long-lasting change.
Published on: 01-Jul-2025
About the Contributor
Kesang Tshokey
Gender and Human Rights Coordinator (HRGC)
Save the Children Bhutan
Kesang Tshokey is the HRG Coordinator for SKPA 2, while also serving as a member of Safeguarding for the Accountability and Safeguarding Working Group with Save the Children Bhutan. Prior to the current role, Kesang Tshokey used to work as a Program Officer with the National Commission for Women and Children under the Royal Government of Bhutan.
