Outside the Conference: Caribbean Gay Men Tackle HIV

Over the weekend, Trinidad & Tobago and Caribbean-region community groups that work with MSM read and responded to a newly published retrospective study, showing MSM's in 38 poor and middle-income countries have 19 times greater risk of HIV infection than the general populations.

Joel Simpson, a human rights lawyer based in Trinidad who serves on the C FLAG Steering Committee, recalled comments he had made days before in marking World AIDS Day: “It is not who they are that puts gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men at risk for HIV,” he had written. “It is the political, legal, economic, social, cultural forms of marginalisation and exclusion that make MSM vulnerable. Criminalisation of sexual activity conducted between consenting, adult men in private reinforces the perpetuation of homophobia at all levels of society, and drives this vulnerable group away from the information and education that is necessary to save their lives and the lives of the men and women who are their partners.”

In the Trinidad study used in the larger meta-analysis, 1 in 4 MSM reported also having sex with women in the past year, and that group of men had lower levels of knowledge about HIV transmission than did those that had sex only with men.

Unlike the US, Trinidad and Tobago implemented a National AIDS Strategy in 2003. But local MSM advocates say the funds for their communities have not followed.

Luke Sinnette, President of Friends for Life, said "Commendably, since 2003 our National AIDS Strategic Plan has recognised MSM as an important population and our organisation, Friends for Life, as a critical part of the response. But going on five years later it’s still just good intentions. As far as resources go, we are yet to see any impact of the plan on the ground in services for MSM. That’s a failure of the promise of leadership.”

Colin Robinson, a Trinidadian who spent 25 years in the US developing HIV programmes for Caribbean and African American MSM and now works with local NGOs, provided an illustration: “Because homophobia and the criminalization of homosexual acts drive MSM underground, our HIV prevention work with them is based largely on encounters that are not face-to-face. We have lost invaluable opportunities as a result. There is nothing more powerful in HIV work than looking someone in the eye and showing them that you understand and care.”