Anti-Stigma HIV Prevention Project

This project used the mass media to raise public awareness, promote discussion, and challenge discriminatory attitudes through radio and television advertising campaigns on abstinence, condom use, women's ability to negotiate condom use, and partner reduction. Through these channels, human rights and sexual health information was presented, with strong emphasis placed on appropriate and effective reactions to abuse. References were given for non-government organisations (NGOs) that offer support during the process of filing a denunciation with National Human Rights Commissions.

Face-to-face, interpersonal activities were also carried out to provide information and empower CSWs and MSM to challenge human rights violations. Outreach workers walked the streets to provide CSWs with information on female condoms, which PASMO cites as a viable option for women unable to negotiate male condom use. Self esteem-building games, team-building activities, panel discussions, and "socio-dramas" in which participants acted out common abusive situations and the implications of different responses were carried out.

Workshops were also held for personnel in a position to protect the rights and safeguard the health of CSWs and MSM, as follows:

• PASMO contracted local Guatemalan NGO Asociación de Salud Integral to design a workshop for medical personnel; 2-day workshops were held with medical staff in all project countries.
• For the police, PASMO developed a two-hour training programme to address misperceptions about HIV and populations that are especially vulnerable. Educators presented HIV/AIDS information, and then initiated discussion about discrimination, asking police officers to reflect on their own experiences as victims. The strategy here involved cultivating empathy rather than adopting an accusatory tone.
• In an effort to support the institutional strengthening of local NGOs that work with populations vulnerable to HIV, four-day workshops were held that focused on strategic planning, donor relations, proposal writing, establishing strategic alliances, effective behaviour change communications (BCC) activities, and conflict resolution.

HIV/AIDS, Rights, Gender, Women.

This project is based on the conviction that "Central American societies tend to tolerate and even condone the marginalization of MSM and CSWs". Organisers have found CSW and MSM abuse to be widespread; police officers, strangers, family members, and colleagues/clients are among the most common reported perpetrators. PASMO claims that MSM and CSWs are often mistreated or refused services at public health centres because of their sexual practices and orientation. Further, many CSWs who try to insist on the use of condoms report threats from clients, ranging from the potential loss of the client to physical abuse. In addition, PASMO observes that social pressure to be heterosexual leads some gay and bisexual men to try conceal their sexual desires. The result: "sexual encounters that occur in isolated places, often when condoms are not readily available, and most [MSM] do not use condoms with their wives or girlfriends as it would arouse suspicion." Thus, PASMO stresses, "discrimination and abuse often lead to risky sexual activity that serves a bridge for the virus to spread and the potential to create a generalised epidemic."

"PASMO has found that people's vulnerability to HIV is very much affected by their access to health care and their ability to negotiate condom use, and that HIV prevention efforts which do not address discrimination have less impact." At the end of the project, national police forces in Guatemala and El Salvador issued formal, written requests for replications of the two-hour training sessions held as part of the project; the Guatemalan police force requested that the trainings be conducted with all 23,000 police officers in the country.