Asia Catalyst Launches New Health Rights Advocacy Training Program

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Asia Catalyst aims to encourage regional exchange and collaboration through our newest initiative – the Health Rights Advocacy Training Program. The prog­­ram builds off of the rights training curriculum, Know It, Prove It, Change It: A Rights Curriculum for Grassroots Groups – a joint project with Thai AIDS Treatment Action Group (TTAG) and Dongjen Center for Human Rights Education and Action.

On May 20, 2013 Asia Catalyst brought together eighteen health rights advocates from nine countries across East and Southeast Asia who are promoting the rights of marginalized communities directly affected by HIV/AIDS. The group spent a week in Bangkok, Thailand, where they participated in sessions led by experts in health rights and advocacy skills, received peer-feedback on their advocacy projects, and visited organizations that are leading grassroots movements in sex worker rights and fighting discrimination and stigma against people living with HIV/AIDS. Hai Vuong, a health rights advocate and photographer from Supporting Community Development Initiatives in Vietnam, captured some of the highlights.

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[NEWS] Guangdong Province Ends Mandatory HIV Testing for Teaching Candidates

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By Mikaela Chase

Guangdong Province appears likely to be the first province in China to end mandatory HIV testing for prospective teachers. Currently, teaching candidates must take an HIV test as part of the required physical examination for teachers. Those who test positive for HIV/AIDS are effectively disqualified and banned from working in the education sector. On May 27, the Guangzhou provincial education department made public their revised health standards; as of September 1, people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) will be able to work as teachers (along with other previously excluded groups, including applicants with physical disabilities). The issue of employment discrimination against PLWHA in China received international attention this January, when the Nanjing-based nonprofit Justice for All obtained compensation for the plaintiff in the first ever successful AIDS employment lawsuit.

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The Path of a Rights Activist – China Alliance of People Living with HIV/AIDS (CAP+)

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TITLE: The Path of a Rights Activist

BY: China Alliance of People Living with HIV/AIDS

In their recent newsletter, the China Alliance of People living with HIV/AIDS (CAP+) announced publication of a unique testimony report about the work of one of their members, Ms. Ma Guihong, who heads the organization Half the Sky in China’s Hebei Province. With the permission of Ms. Ma and CAP+, we are re-posting the below summary with links to the original Chinese and English full text.

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[COMMENTARY] What We Talk About When We Talk About Outreach

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By Mike Frick 

Many of our partners in China engage in “outreach” to marginalized communities such as sex workers, drug users, or men who have sex with men, that are at increased risk of contracting HIV. We hear a lot about “outreach,” but what do these activities actually look like in practice? China program director Gisa Hartmann and I experienced outreach first-hand when we accompanied Lanlan, a member of Asia Catalyst’s NGO Leadership Cohort, on an afternoon with female sex workers in Tianjin.

Lanlan is the founder and executive director of Tianjin’s Xin’ai Home, a grassroots organization dedicated to promoting the health and rights of female sex workers in Tianjin. Over the course of four hours, Lan Lan showed us two different outreach environments: a bathhouse with about twenty-five sex workers and a street with dozens of hair salons and massage parlors, each staffed by two or three women.

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[RESOURCE] Know It: The Rights Framework

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Asia Catalyst, Thai AIDS Treatment Action Group and Dongjen Center for Human Rights Education and Action announce the publication of the second in our series of human rights manuals for grassroots groups from HIV/AIDS-affected communities: Know It: The Rights Framework. 

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