After the United States slashed its foreign aid funding last year, more than 280,000 aid workers worldwide lost their jobs. Most of those workers live outside the U.S., in conflict zones or poor areas where other job opportunities are scarce.
In impoverished Nepal, where a conservative culture leaves openly transgender people with few legal job options, the impact on aid workers’ lives was crushing. Starving and scared, around 100 LGBTQ+ aid workers left jobless by the funding cuts have turned to sex work to survive, walking the streets alongside the very people they once fought so hard to help.
Associated Press journalists Kristen Gelineau and Bram Janssen traveled to Nepal to shadow former aid workers who dedicated years of their lives to helping prevent the spread of HIV in Nepal's marginalized communities. Having turned in desperation to sex work after the funding cuts, they now live in fear of contracting HIV themselves, and face frequent, brutal violence.
