10 December 2019

UNAIDS

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizations—UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank—and works closely with global and national partners towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more at unaids.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

Charlot Jeudy, the President of Haiti’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community organization Kouraj, was found dead at his home in November. Investigations into the circumstances of his death are ongoing. UNAIDS remembers Mr Jeudy as a fearless campaigner for human rights.

In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in 2010, the people of Haiti worked to overcome the loss of homes, businesses, public services and more than 100 000 lives. But amid the shared trauma and determination, a harmful narrative emerged.

Some people began to blame the masisi—a derogatory Haitian Creole term for gay men. They thought that the disaster was a divine punishment for the sins of the LGBT community. Members of sexual and gender minorities found themselves subject to intensified exclusion and abuse. Human rights organizations documented cases of LGBT people being denied access to emergency housing, food, health care and work. There were also reports of physical assaults and homophobic rape.

Rather than accept the situation, Charlot Jeudy decided to act. He created Kouraj, which means courage in Haitian Creole. In the struggle for equal rights, Kouraj emphasized the importance of community empowerment and aimed to inspire pride and confidence among LGBT people.

“We wish to put forward an alternative discourse on homosexuality in Haiti because for too long only homophobes have discussed our reality and proposed their own interpretation,” Mr Jeudy said in 2011.

Over the next eight years, Kouraj evolved to offer community training, legal and psychosocial services and sexual health education. It became one of Haiti’s leading advocates for ending discrimination against LGBT people and has played a key role in resisting the introduction of discriminatory laws.

The organization was aptly named. Its members have contended with verbal abuse and death threats. Three years ago, it had to cancel a festival to celebrate the Afro-Caribbean LGBT community after numerous threats of violence. According to friends, Mr Jeudy resisted their pleas to leave the country at the time. In response to a spike in reports of anti-LGBT street violence last year, he worked with the United Nations on a project to promote tolerance and equal rights.

John Waters, Programme Manager of the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition, paid tribute to Mr Jeudy’s leadership.

"I have watched Charlot Jeudy grow from a young, impatient and impassioned activist into a thoughtful, strategic leader, capable of using human rights not as a sword, but as a shield,” said Mr Waters. “He won over the hearts and minds of others to create allies. Mr Jeudy has left a huge gap in human rights work in the Caribbean. He raised the bar for those who must now follow in his footsteps.”

Mr Jeudy was also an active civil society representative on the body that oversees the management of Haiti’s response to HIV, tuberculosis and malaria.

“Under Charlot Jeudy’s leadership, Kouraj was a model partner,” said Fritz Moise, Executive Director of the Foundation for Reproductive Health and Family Education. “His death is a big loss for the response to HIV in Haiti.”

UNAIDS has added its voice to the expressions of grief and also paid tribute to the leadership of Mr Jeudy.

“Charlot Jeudy exemplified the power of communities to be the voice for the voiceless and to make meaningful change in people’s lives,” said UNAIDS Country Director for Haiti, Mame Awa Faye. “This World AIDS Day we celebrated the power of communities to make a difference. Mr Jeudy did just that.”

“Is it safe to do their work?” Renaè Green and Donique Givans go silent for several seconds. “I am still scared,” says Ms Green, the Associate Director for Policy and Advocacy at TransWave Jamaica. “I don’t like to go to certain spaces. If anyone wants to participate in one of our campaigns, we explain the risks. You don’t know what kind of backlash you might experience.”

Ms Givans, who is the organization’s community liaison officer, knows this all too well. She wasn’t up front about her gender identity with her father when she began becoming more visible in her advocacy work.

“He doesn’t want anything to do with me now,” she says, her voice shaking a little. “He told me to go and not to come back to his house. So, we do let people know they might have difficulties.”

TransWave was formed in 2015 following a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender health and gender-based violence training, conducted by WE-Change and supported by the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays and Jamaica AIDS Support for Life.

TransWave’s Executive Director, Neish McLean, is the only transgender man at the helm of a Caribbean transgender organization. Recently Mr McLean discussed his personal journey publicly, exploring issues ranging from the distinction between gender identity and sexuality to top surgery. This is largely unchartered territory in a Caribbean nation famed for its social conservatism.

“For a long time, people actually said that transgender people didn’t exist in Jamaica because people could not put a face to them or identify anyone who was transgender. Now we have so many people who identify. It has helped in terms of explaining who transgender people are,” explains Ms Green. 

In addition to increasing transgender visibility, TransWave advocates on a wide range of subjects that affect the community—the lack of access to transgender-oriented housing, education and employment, for example, as well as initiatives to reduce poverty and violence. HIV is a huge challenge. A 2018 Integrated Biological and Behavioral Surveillance Survey conducted by the University of San Francisco found that 51% of Jamaican transwomen tested were living with HIV.

TransWave advocates strongly for all members of the community to access health care.

“Many are aware that they are HIV-positive but don’t seek treatment. They are just waiting to die. People cannot stomach not being able to live their lives as their real selves and won’t put themselves through the distress of going to a clinic,” says Ms Green. “It becomes difficult because all eyes are on you and you are putting yourself at risk for people to attack or hurt you,” explains Ms Green.

In July, UNAIDS Jamaica supported TransWave’s Transgender Health and Wellness Conference. The event helped launch a toolkit on how health-care providers can provide holistic, non-discriminatory services, along with dialogue around the rights and inclusion of transgender people. The organization has also met some employers to gauge the degree of acceptance for the inclusion of transgender workers.

Ms Givens paints a mixed picture of what life is like for transgender people in Jamaica. 

“It is very difficult, but people try to align themselves with society’s gender norms. They might do a little makeup to feel comfortable, but they don’t go heavy. Some workplaces allow people to be themselves, but you don’t have transwomen wearing skirts,” she said.

Public transportation is often challenging. When TransWave books a taxi, for example, they are never sure if the driver will be tolerant. Renting an apartment can be a landmine. Lower-priced housing often means living in a less safe area. Landlords and neighbours can be judgemental.

At the extreme, homelessness remains a major problem, with some young transgender people being thrown out of their homes before they even become teenagers. This is often the starting point for a frightening array of vulnerabilities, including a lack of schooling, poor job prospects and bad health, with some turning to sex work.

Asked about their hopes for the future, Ms Givans and Ms Green list adequate funding for TransWave and being able to further their education. Ms Green adds that she would like to emigrate.

“But not everybody wants to leave Jamaica and not everybody should leave,” she says pointedly. “That’s why we are working so hard. So that we can get to a point where everybody is accepted.”

Fifty years after the Stonewall riots in New York, United States of America―a major milestone in the modern struggle to recognize the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people―more people are benefiting from the rights that the Stonewall protesters campaigned for. The number of people living in countries that criminalize consensual same-sex sexual relationships has steadily declined since 1969.

In June 2019, Botswana became the latest country to decriminalize same-sex relationships, but Africa still accounts for about half of the world’s population living in countries with anti-homosexuality laws. In 2018, the proportion of the world’s population that lives in countries that criminalize same-sex sexual relations plummeted from about 40% to 23% following the Indian Supreme Court’s decision that decriminalized all consensual sex among adults. This was the largest annual decline since China decriminalized same-sex sexual relationships in 1997.

Prohibitive laws and policies against key populations increase their vulnerability to HIV. It is therefore vital to ensure the full respect of the human rights of all people, regardless of their sexual orientation and gender identity, including through repealing laws that prohibit sex between consenting adults in private, enforcing laws to protect people from violence and discrimination and addressing homophobia and transphobia.

Consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized in at least 67 countries and territories worldwide.