History of the Oath

In May 2006, two U.S. District Courts issued decisions that the oath required of grant recipients by the U.S. government violates the First Amendment rights of the plaintiff organizations, DKT International, the Alliance for Open Society International and Pathfinder. While excellent news for U.S. organizations, these decisions do not apply to subgrantees working on the ground in other countries. Similar to the global gag rule on abortion activities, U.S.-based groups are not restricted, but all their subgrantees are, and unfortunately, in most instances, those doing cutting edge work and outreach on the ground are the subgrantees working with sex worker populations. CHANGE's early research on this, for which findings will be published at the 2006 AIDS Conference in Toronto, shows that the impact on national and local groups is quite damaging.

Public health, human rights, and faith-based advocates have been deeply concerned that the U.S. global AIDS "loyalty oath regarding prostitution" restricts programs from using best practices to prevent HIV/AIDS among sex workers and trafficked individuals. The prostitution loyalty oath requires that U.S. and foreign non-governmental organizations receiving USAID funding must adopt a policy "explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking" through out their programs, regardless of funding source.