On the second day of the International conference on STI’s and AIDS (ICASA ) Pre- conference December 2nd in Addis Ababa- Ethiopia, hosted by talent youth association TAYA, which is in a bid to prepare youths to have a head start as per the expectations of ICASA, young people attending have already familiarized themselves with the environment and people can now talk more freely, perhaps the reason why the session on Inclusion of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex(LGBTQI) Youth in HIV and Sesual reproductive Health and rights (SRHR() interventions is kept to be dealt with on this day.
The session is facilitated by Steve Letsike working with “OUT”, South Africa which is an organization dedicated to the promotion of the rights of LGBTQI’s and giving them the specific health services they require in an enabling environment. She begins the session with the projection of a good practice video which showed the evolution of demands for equal rights by the gay community of Pretoria and the subsequent evolution to the point when LGBTQI’S are legally recognized and can officialize their marriages in both churches and family affairs centers. See www.M2M.com and www.W2W.com for more on this organization.

I came to the realization that most people who have been working in the field of SRHR and even sexual diversities did not really understand some basic terminologies even down to the definitions of LGBTQI’s. So for the benefit of doubt, I will give the most basic of these definitions but for more clarity you can always check out the above mentioned websites. For the purpose and length of this article LGBTQI’S will be defined as:

L-Lesbian is a woman who has emotional, sexual, intellectual and romantic attraction towards another woman.
G-Gay is a man who shares emotional, sexual, intellectual and romantic attraction towards a man.
B-Bisexual is a man or woman who shares emotional, sexual, intellectual and romantic attraction towards both men and women.
T-Transgender is a man or woman who identifies differently from the gender assigned to She/he.
I-Intersex is someone who has an indeterminate sexual organ and needs a decision to be made.
Q-Queer is someone who is flexible and will rather not be labeled as either gay, lesbian, bisexual, or any such labels and lives his sexuality as she/he pleases.
The discussion focused around three basic questions.
1. How do we use our expertise where we come from to further integrate LGBTIQ’s?
2. What is your role in addressing this issue?
3. What are the resources required to better meet the needs of these people.
In Response to these questions, after much deliberation, participants came up with the following ideas.
For question one, the responses were as follows;

• Integration of LGBTQI issues in national and strategic health plans first by understanding the dynamics around LGBTQI issues.
• Conducting ample research to provide concrete statistics with which governments can be held to commit on the basis of the realities these statistics present. for example there are over 1 million known LGBTQI’s in Africa and 40% of them are HIV positive, this kind of information therefore will be very useful when pressure is mounted on governments to enable such people access health facilities without being discriminated upon on the basis of their sexual identities.
• Training of health practitioners and revising the develop manuals to enable them provide services meet the needs and aspirations of LGBTQIs
• Advocacy for their rights using other unexplored venues like new media.
• Engaging with policy makers.
• Revising awareness of the needs of these people and advocating for them to be met.

For the second question, the responses were as follows.

• Discourage discrimination and change existing attitudes
• Raise awareness of the rights and also responsibilities of these people through a human rights based approach for example International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) Sexual rights declaration handbook made in conjunction with the United Nations(UN) Universal Human Rights declaration.
• Values clarification
• Identifying key entry points and gate keepers (parliamentarians) working with those who are understanding to push the change at a higher level (PARLIAMENT)

As regards the last question, ideas gathered were;

• Creation of youth friendly and drop in centers for LGBTQIs
• Provision of commodities and resources which meet their specific needs and aspirations(lubricants, condoms suited for anal sex etc)
• Policy documents
• Finally removing punitive laws on LGBTQIs.

I will like to conclude this blog by mentioning that even though Ethiopia is host to the ICASA conference, with the ministry of health directly involved, things have not been made particularly easy for the LGBTQI community that will be attending this event. The public opinion is that ICASA is a gay conference and most people are bent on making the process a failure as much as they can. People are particularly skeptical about giving out the joints or meeting places out for fear of being condemned they are promoting gay activities and even the Pre-conference cocktail party was cancelled because the owner of the place declined giving it out when she found out those hiring it were for the ICASA program and a meeting of LGBTQI s in one of tthe hotels was cancelled on the same premise!

By Abongwa Victor
International Youth Journalist
Cameroon.