The objective of this workshop is to educate attendees on harm reduction history, practice and impact on HIV and sex worker advocacy. It will focus on: 1) harm reduction history and practice; 2) defining harm in relationship to social context; 3) key harm reduction principles and their application to a variety of scenarios; and 4) harm reduction principles as they are applied to sex work and HIV advocacy. Embedded in a rights-based framework, harm reduction refers to policies, programmes and practices that aim to lessen the adverse health, social and economic consequences of an action (sex work, drug use, etc.) without requiring that one quit engaging in that action. Harm reduction interventions are facilitative, rather than coercive, and are grounded in the needs of individuals. As such, harm reduction services are designed to meet people where they currently are in their lives.

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