PINK Armenia Joins the Community, Rights, Gender (CRG) Working Group

Adjacent to the Country Coordination Mechanism for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (CCM) of the Republic of Armenia, a new working group has been formed—“Community, Rights, Gender” (CRG). PINK Armenia was invited to be a part of the working group.

The group aims to ensure community involvement in decision-making processes and to ensure the inclusion of human rights protection and gender equality within CCM. One of its main objectives is the monitoring and analysis of human rights violation cases among people who use drugs, sex workers, men who have sex with men and people living with certain infections, as well as ensuring the accessibility of medical assistance within the spheres of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.

World AIDS Day: Challenges Facing Armenia

BY JIRAIR RATEVOSIAN

Today is World AIDS Day—the day of the year when the world’s attention is temporarily fixated on a social phenomenon that has stolen the lives of millions of people around the world over the last 30 years.

But there is some good news. A new report by the United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) shows that the AIDS epidemic is beginning to change course as the number of people newly infected with HIV is declining and AIDS-related deaths are decreasing.

Yet, despite important advances over the last 10 years, some 2.6 million people became newly infected with HIV last year. Africa continues to be the region most affected by the epidemic. But now a new trend is emerging: In seven countries, mostly in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, new HIV infection rates have increased by 25 percent in recent years.

Here’s the bad news. ARMENIA is #1 on that list. In our motherland, the epidemic is concentrated primarily among people who inject drugs, sex workers, gay men, and other men who have sex with men. It is no coincidence the epidemic is spreading in populations that are socially marginalized and politically irrelevant. Stigma, discrimination, and violence against LGBT Armenians and other vulnerable groups fuel the spread of HIV and AIDS.

Today, this injustice is tainting the moral character of our resilient people. The Armenian government, civil society groups, the private sector, the church, and the media all have a critical role to play in respond to our generation’s greatest challenge. And so do we.

As diaspora, we must face up to this new reality. We have a responsibility to raise awareness in our homes and in our communities—in schools, with lawmakers, community leaders, the media, and the church. Above all, we must support our courageous brothers and sisters working in our homeland each and every day for equality and social justice.

Get involved—write a letter to your local Armenian newspaper, encourage community leaders to raise awareness at events and support NGOs in Armenia fighting the good fight.

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Jirair Ratevosian, MPH, is based in Washington D.C. He chairs the International Health Advocacy and Policy Committee of the American Public Health Association and is deputy director of public policy for amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research.

source: Asbarez Armenian News

Be heard! Global Forum on MSM & HIV

The Global Forum on MSM & HIV (MSMGF) starts the 4th pre-conference on July 17, 2010 to the 18th International AIDS Conference in Vienna Austria. This one-day event explores the challenges and best practices in achieving universal access to HIV-related prevention, care, treatment, and support services for sexual minority communities worldwide.

Be Heard! convenes 450 human rights advocates, artists, researchers, public health officials, multi-lateral organizations, and global donors for a day of workshops, skills building, information exchange, and networking sessions. The MSM pre-conference will be followed by an evening networking reception.

MSMGF recommends a rights-based and person-centered approach to developing guidelines that will help transgender persons receive non-discriminatory, non-judgmental and quality health care. There has been an international wave of advocacy calling on authorities such as the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and World Health Organization (WHO) to depathologize transgender identities. Pathologizing gender identity variance as a ‘psychiatric disorder’ only perpetuates the stigma, discrimination and violence that these individuals experience around the world.

As a global advocacy organization working for the health and human rights of men who have sex with men (MSM), the MSMGF is familiar with stigma within health system structures and its negative impact on individuals and communities. For instance, the classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder by institutions such as the APA until 1973 and the WHO until 1993 helped endorse discrimination against gay men and other MSM at multiple levels. Stigma and discrimination impact health by heightening HIV risk factors, including social isolation, and compromising access to HIV prevention, care and treatment services. Transgender persons are also the targets of stigma and discrimination that can be exacerbated by a mental diagnosis, ultimately resulting in compromised health and wellness.

Source: The Global Forum on MSM & HIV (MSMGF)

Advancing the rights of people living with and vulnerable to HIV

Human rights violations continue to hinder the response to HIV/AIDS, to place people at risk of HIV and to be addressed in AIDS programs and policy. Subordination of women constrains their ability to demand safer sex and their equal access to health and education services.

Men who have sex with men and sex workers are harassed and abused with impunity in many countries. Prisoners are denied access to HIV/AIDS services and support that are available to others. Indigenous persons and migrants face multiple forms of discrimination that inhibit their seeking of HIV/AIDS services.

People living with HIV/AIDS face a wide range of discriminatory practices in many settings. In short, in spite of widespread rhetorical support for human rights-based approaches to addressing HIV/AIDS, much remains to be done to safeguard the human rights of people living with HIV/AIDS and those most affected by the disease.

In facing these challenges, organizations of people living with HIV/AIDS, advocates and policy-makers have often needed and relied upon legal and human rights analysis and relevant research — to challenge discriminatory laws, to resist unjust or ill-informed policies, to use legal procedures to secure people’s rights and to transform social relations and conditions in ways that protect people against HIV and ensure access to dignity and care for those living with HIV.

Yet such information and tools are often inaccessible in a given language or format or seldom adapted to a particular set of new circumstances. In some cases, many resources exist on a given subject, but those who need these documents do not have the time or resources to find what they need or to work out which existing materials are most pertinent for their needs.

AIDSLEX (the AIDS and Law Exchange) gives concrete meaning to a “rights-based approach to HIV/AIDS”. This web portal is a tool for activists, community organizations, researchers, policy-makers, journalists, health workers and anyone who seeks quick and easy access to a wide range of resources about HIV, human rights and the law. It helps people around the world communicate and share information, materials and strategies, with the ultimate goal of contributing to a global effort to protect and promote the human rights of people living with or vulnerable to HIV and AIDS.

HIV prevention hampered by homophobia

Every two or three days a person is killed in Brazil in violence connected with his or her sexuality, according to Brazil's oldest gay rights association, Grupo Gay da Bahia (GGB). In Mexico, the reported figure is nearly two a week.
Most of the victims are men who have sex with other men (MSM) - whether they are gays or bisexuals - or transgender people.
But if Brazil and Mexico top the table of violence against men who have sex with men in Latin America, this may be because rights groups there monitor the situation more closely than elsewhere in Latin America. Much violence simply goes unreported elsewhere, gay activist organizations say.
"Brazil and Mexico are the only countries which have a register, which keep track of the murders. That does not mean necessarily that there is more violence there," says Arturo Díaz Betancourt of the Mexican National Council for the Prevention of Discrimination.
It is notable that when the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Killings made an official mission to Guatemala in 2006 his attention was drawn to a series of murders of gay and transgender people, and his subsequent report to the Human Rights Council stated "There has been impunity for murders motivated by hatred towards persons identifying as gay, lesbian, transgender, and transsexual. Credible information suggests that there were at least 35 such murders between 1996 and 2006. Given the lack of official statistics and the likely reticence if not ignorance of victims' family members, there is reason to believe that the actual numbers are significantly higher."
Many Latin American countries boast socially advanced legislation when it comes to defending sexual freedom and orientation. With law reform in Nicaragua and Panama over the past 12 months, there are now no states in Latin America which criminalize homosexual relations, for example.
Yet perhaps influenced by a lingering "machismo", prejudice and discrimination continue to flourish, whatever the laws say. Latin America is widely regarded as having a long way to go to successfully counter homophobia, or "fear or hatred of homosexuals."
"There is a real contrast between reality and theory. This is the developing region of the world with the highest number of laws against discrimination based on sexual orientation," says Dr. Ruben Mayorga, UNAIDS Country Coordinator for Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.
Aside from the individual pain homophobic attitudes inflict, the continuing stigma attached to same-sex relations is complicating hugely the task of slowing the spread of HIV in a region where sex between men is a leading mode of HIV transmission, health experts say.
Stigma and homophobia increase the isolation of gays, bisexuals and transgender people making them more reluctant to come forward, be identified and get advice.
"Homophobia represents a threat to public heath in Latin America," the Pan American Health Organization affirmed in a report. "This form of stigma and discrimination based on sexual orientation does not just affect the mental and physical health of the homosexual community, but contributes to the spread of the HIV epidemic."
UNAIDS has long campaigned against discrimination whether against those infected by the HIV virus or against a person for his or her sexual orientation.

source: UNAIDS