MPact’s 2020 Annual Report

A tool for reporting and assessing human rights violations against gay, bisexual, and queer people — built for advocates and community organizations.

Violations against gay, bisexual, and queer people are under-reported — usually not because nobody saw them, but because the people best placed to see them have no shared way to write them down. Notes end up in a dozen formats across a dozen organizations, and none of them add up to the pattern.

This tool exists to give advocates and community organizations one format. It works in two directions: report a single incident to MPact through the online form, or download the workbook and run your own documentation process — assessing what happened, recording who was affected, and keeping a record consistent enough to stand next to the next one.

What you can do with it

• Report an individual incident directly to MPact through the online form
• Assess a violation against a consistent set of questions instead of ad-hoc notes
• Keep a structured record across many incidents, in one workbook
• Hand community-level documentation to funders, journalists, or advocacy bodies in a form they can use

Around the globe, the sexual behaviors of gay and bisexual men who have sex with men (GBMSM) are often the subject of restrictive laws and policies that criminalize consensual sexual activities. This criminalization of consensual same-sex sexual acts (CSSSA) leaves our communities highly vulnerable to violence, poor health outcomes, incarceration, and death. Activists fight daily to change these policies so that they and their loved ones have opportunities to find community, sexual connection, love, and a chance to thrive.

Decriminalization advocacy is ultimately about changing laws and policies; however, many GBMSM are living in contexts where direct lobbying or protesting of leadership is unlikely to result in meaningful change or may even provoke a backlash. This publication is meant to briefly provide suggested activities for advocates to strategically focus their efforts on social and cultural change-makers who have the potential to shift culture, are more likely to respond to community advocacy, and build momentum for eventual policy change.

Practical Guidance for Implementing HIV and STI Programs with MSM

Men who have sex with men have played a central role in designing and implementing HIV prevention, treatment, care and support programs since the start of the HIV epidemic. For more than 30 years, their expertise, creativity, energy and fortitude have shaped the global response to the epidemic in important and indelible ways. The MSM Implementation Toolkit (MSMIT) seeks to honor and support the legacy forged by men who have sex with men at the community level and which they continue to create. It therefore gives particular attention to programs run or led by men who have sex with men themselves, in contexts where this is possible.

How to use this tool

This tool is designed for use by public-health officials and managers of HIV, AIDS and STI programmes; NGOs, including community and civil-society organizations; and health workers. It may also be of interest to international funding agencies, health policy-makers and advocates. It is meant to cover implementation of interventions across the full HIV services continuum, including prevention, treatment, care and support interventions. Each chapter explicitly or implicitly addresses one or more of the 2011 Guidelines for HIV and STI Prevention and Treatment Among MSM or the 2014 Consolidated Guidelines for Key Populations.

Six chapters organized across six principal areas of focus

The first two chapters describe approaches and principles to building programs that are led by men who have sex with men. These community-led approaches are themselves essential interventions. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 describe approaches to implementing recommended interventions for HIV prevention, care and treatment. Chapter 6 describes how to manage programs and build the capacity of organizations of men who have sex with men.

Another useful tool from WHO to set and monitor targets for HIV prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care for key populations: Click here