UNDP provided technical support with ACON

(Busan)  Less than a day after his speech won rave reviews at the opening ceremony of the 10th ICAAP, the president of Fiji,  Ratu Epeli Nailatikau, joined United Nations officials and representatives of a key NGO from the Pacific island-nation at the launch of a landmark report on men who have sex with men, transgender people and HIV.

“Secret Lives, Other Voices”, subtitled “A community-based study exploring male-to-male sex, gender identity and HIV transmission risk in Fiji,” is the first such research to be conducted with MSM and transgender people in that country since 1998.

“We fully involved the communities in every stage of the process,” explained Niraj Singh, Project Manager of the AIDS Task Force of Fiji and its Amithi project, whose study was funded by a competitive grant from the HIV and AIDS Thematic fund of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). “This included initiating the research, the planning and study design, data collection, analyzing the data and reporting it.  Instead of being treated merely as subjects, the communities in this instance were key players in the research.”

The study, encompassing more than 200 MSM and transgender persons, revealed some important and disturbing findings.  Despite higher levels of knowledge than before regarding HIV and AIDS, many individuals from these marginalized communities are not motivated to use condoms.  Fiji recently lifted discriminatory laws that were a relic of the colonial era, but stigma and discrimination towards MSM and transgender persons remains high, proving a significant barrier to HIV testing, and leading to what the study calls a “fatalistic attitude” caused by homophobia and transphobia.

“There is a huge lack of trust in clinics, concern over privacy and confidentiality, the feeling that one is constantly being judged by health care providers and society as a whole,” said Ben Bavinton, community researcher with ATFF and associated with the AIDS Council of New South Wales (ACON), Australia, which provided key technical expertise for the study.  “Moreover, almost a third of the respondents had experienced physical violence, often really brutal violence, in the six months prior to the study being conducted.”

See the full story on the launch of “Secret Lives, Other Voices”.

See also "Secret lives, other voices: study explores sexuality, gender identity and HIV transmission risk in Fiji" on unaids.org.