Supporting Social Change to Curb Violence and Eliminate HIV in Guyana, by Anne Stangl of ICRW

By Anne Stangl

*This blog originally appeared on ICRW

As I fly home from the humid, vibrant and bustling Georgetown, the capital city of Guyana, I am a bit overwhelmed by the daunting task the country faces to address the high levels of intimate partner violence, sexual assault, child abuse and suicide in the country.

Over the last week, my colleague Jocelyn Lehrer and I had the privilege of speaking with people working at community-based organizations throughout the country who are an integral part of tackling these challenges. Peer educators, social workers, nurses, counselors, people living with HIV, LGBT advocates, and survivors of violence all took time from their important work to speak with us about their efforts to create a path forward for Guyana.

My visit to the South American nation was the kick-off trip for ICRW’s grant work under Advancing Partners & Communities (APC), a USAID funded project, implemented by JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc., in partnership with FHI 360. ICRW is assisting in the implementation of the project in Guyana over the next three years, helping to strengthen the capacity of local organizations in Guyana to provide HIV prevention, care and treatment services to key populations at heightened risk of HIV infection, including women, men who have sex with men, transgender individuals and sex workers. Reaching these populations is critical for eliminating new HIV infections in Guyana, but extremely challenging, as these groups face high levels of stigma, discrimination and violence in society.

Given mounting global evidence that sexual assault and partner violence are directly linked with HIV infection, it is crucial for Guyana to tackle these key drivers of the HIV epidemic head-on.

During the trip, I learned of the great work these organizations and individuals are doing to support survivors of gender-based violence and to ultimately break the cycle of violence so that no woman or girl has to experience it in her daily life. From training police to be gender- and LGBT-sensitive, to supporting abused women, men and transgendered individuals in accessing justice, to sheltering women and children when their homes are unsafe, I could see firsthand that change is coming to communities in Guyana.

And while these conversations gave me great insight into the powerful individuals working to reduce violence in Guyana, I did see something worrying.

In interview after interview, themes began to emerge: Gender-based violence is pervasive. Services for survivors are limited or very difficult to access. Marginalized populations such as men who have sex with men, transgendered individuals and sex workers are at heightened risk of experiencing violence. Resources are limited for carrying out community- and national-level programs to change harmful gender norms and break the cycle of violence.

The stories shared by these frontline workers were reinforced daily by headlines in the local newspaper: a police officer charged with sexually assaulting a young man with a wooden police baton; a 23 year old who murdered his 14-year-old girlfriend and then hung himself. 

Despite these challenges and the ubiquitous headlines, I am cautiously optimistic about what we can accomplish.

On our final evening in Georgetown - the country’s largest urban center- we attended a production of “Before Her Parting” at the National Cultural Center. The play was written by Mosa Mathifa Telford, directed by Tivia Collins and staged by Merundoi Incorporated - a community-based organization that utilizes entertainment to educate the public, affect individuals’ attitudes and behaviors, and shift social norms. The gripping drama portrays a reality that’s all too common in Guyana in which young woman is murdered by her husband, who then kills himself. The plot could have been ripped straight from recent headlines.

The play also explores the intergenerational cycle of abuse that fosters violence generation after generation in Guyanese society: A woman is abused by her husband and is violent toward her son; her son grows up to beat and ultimately murder his wife, and the cycle continues. The play was followed by a facilitated discussion with the more than 400 audience members, ranging from students to teachers to civil servants, and a panel of speakers from various government institutions. It was heartening to hear these young Guyanese demand both action to reduce violence and expanded services to support survivors.

It is my hope that though USAID’s Advancing Partners and Communities Initiative, ICRW and John Snow International will be able to strengthen the capacity of local organizations so they are better equipped to respond to gender-based violence in Guyana and can continue to facilitate social norm changes to reduce violence and reduce the spread of HIV infection.

Above all, from my time in Guyana, I saw hope and determination. Hope that the next generation will not see the type of endemic violence that has pervaded Guyana for decades, and be determined to tackle these problems head-on. It’s important that those of us in the global community echo that hope and determination, too. We need to ensure that community workers and advocates have the tools to end these human rights violations as well as to empower women and girls to live free from fear of violence or abuse.

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Thank you to Anne for allowing us to share this post. If you would like to know more about what Anne does at ICRW, check out her twitter feed.

amfAR’s GMT Initiative is Combating the Stigma and Discrimination that Fuel HIV Infections among LGBT Worldwide

By: Lucile Scott, amfAR

Since its inception in 2007, amfAR’s GMT Initiative has provided financial and technical support to over 164 community organizations working on the front lines of the epidemic to reduce the spread and impact of HIV among gay men, other men who have sex with men, and transgender individuals (collectively, GMT) in low- and middle-income countries. Worldwide, as treatment access and prevention science improves, stigma and discrimination is often the main barrier to reducing infection rates and improving access to care among GMT. Stigma and discrimination affect every aspect and stage of HIV treatment and prevention, from putting individuals at greater risk of engaging in high-risk behavior that can lead to HIV infection to preventing them from accessing health and testing services to stopping governments from targeting them with HIV treatment and prevention efforts—though they are often one of -- if not the-- most impacted populations in that government’s country.

amfAR launches a new report providing the first-ever
comprehensive analysis of the financing and implementation
of HIV programs for GMT in Southern Africa

The GMT Initiative provides funding and support for localized capacity-strengthening mentoring. This helps grantee partners develop advocacy, outreach, and training programs that target GMT, healthcare providers, governments, and the general population to reduce the stigma and discrimination they face. Many are doing this work in countries where homosexuality is illegal, and HIV rates are high.

Through these programs, our grantees

-train and empower members of the GMT community to perform peer HIV services and advocate for their rights

-train healthcare workers about how to provide GMT with stigma and discrimination-free care

-advocate for governments to overturn discriminatory policies that deny GMT rights, including proper healthcare

-train the governments about how to better reach GMT with HIV messaging once they have removed policy and legal barriers to doing so. 

The organizations also organize campaigns, performances, protests, and more that aim to educate the general population about the GMT community. The GMT Initiative continues to support our partner organizations as they grow and work to formalize and evaluate their programs to improve their impact and to better understand and pass on to others what strategies work most effectively.

In the past year, while our grantees have witnessed many milestones in combating stigma and discrimination, they have also witnessed much backlash to that progress. For instance, in Uganda, advocates recently succeeded in convincing the government to include GMT in their national HIV strategy. However, in December the Parliament passed a law criminalizing “promotion of homosexuality,” forcing those providing GMT with HIV services, including our grantee partner Spectrum Uganda, to—at-the-least temporarily—shut those services down. While that bill has not yet been signed into law by the President, similar bills passed in Nigeria and Russia were. They have also severely and, unless they are repealed, permanently curtailed our grantees’ and other organizations’ ability to do HIV outreach among GMT, reversing years of progress, and wasting millions of dollars in global AIDS funding.

amfAR grantee-partner SOMOSGAY's new
 men's health center during its launch party

But in Armenia, as a similar law was under debate (that has not passed), grantee partner We for Civil Equality worked with doctors, social workers and human rights structures within the Armenian government to create a strong medical referral system to help GMT living with HIV access non-discriminatory care and obtain their life-saving medications. And in Paraguay, our long-time grantee partner SOMOSGAY opened a men’s health center created to cater to the needs of GMT. Three grantee partner organizations in Togo hosted a workshop for members of the media on how to improve their stigmatizing portrayals of GMT. And in Argentina, grantee partner Asociación de Travestis, Transexuales, Transgéneros Argentinas (ATTTA) started shooting a documentary to educate the general population about the discrimination and barriers to equal rights that trans people experience each day.

A film shoot for amfAR grantee-partner ATTTA's documentary
about the fight for trans rights in Argentina  

As Yves Yomb, executive director of Alternatives-Cameroun, told us in July, shortly after a string of attacks against Cameroonian LGBT activists and organizations forced Alternatives to shut down their HIV outreach operations, “We know this revolution will take time, as do all the revolutions in the world.  We don't know if we will see the result, but we hope in 10 or 20 years, people will say the fight for gay rights began in 2005, and thanks to them we have the rights that we have at this moment.”

 And these are just a few of our grantee partners’ stories and successes. To read more about how they confront and combat stigma and discrimination, please read our GMT Initiative blog, Grassroots.