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Asia Catalyst is an Asian independent organization that promotes civil society and advances the right to health for marginalized groups in Asia. Since its founding in 2006 by Sara L.M. Davis, the organization has opened offices in New York, United States; Beijing, China, and Bangkok, Thailand. It has also successfully established 200 communities in 11 different countries. [1]
Asia Catalyst works with community-based organizations (CBOs) from marginalized groups that work on the right to health. Its partners come from communities that often experience severe and systemic rights violations, and are unable to or unaware of how to conduct effective advocacy around these issues. Partner groups include people living with HIV (PLHIV) and hepatitis, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT+) people and men who have sex with men (MSM), sex workers, and people who use drugs.[ citation needed ]
Asia Catalyst defines a community-based organization (CBO) as a civil society group that operates within a specific community or groups of communities. Asia Catalyst works only with CBOs that represent marginalized communities. It requires that partner organizations have at least one member of the marginalized community in a decision-making position within the organization. This is meant to "ensure that the voices of marginalized communities are heard, and that Asia Catalyst's work focuses on the real, and most pressing, rights violations experienced." [2]
Over the course of Asia Catalyst's history, it has partnered with hundreds of CBOs in 11 Asian countries, including Cambodia, China, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Nepal, The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea.[ citation needed ]
Asia Catalyst supports civil society development and empowerment through tailored capacity building, research, and advocacy on issues of most concern to marginalized communities in Asia.
Asia Catalyst uses an innovative responsive model to "ensure community voice and need is at the heart of all programming." [3] It incorporates a training-of-trainers methodology into all long-term programs to ensure sustainability, and continuously evaluates and adjusts its program approach to maximize impact and quality.
Asia Catalyst has four main program areas: CBO Catalyst, Regional Rights Training, tailored coaching, and advocacy.[ citation needed ]
Asia Catalyst believes that community based organizations (CBOs) are best positioned to conduct their own advocacy as they have a unique understanding of the circumstances in which they work and the communities they represent.
Asia Catalyst’s seminal program, the CBO Catalyst, [4] is a capacity building program for CBO leaders from marginalized groups in Asia. Over the course of one year, Asia Catalyst convenes a group of CBO leaders for capacity building workshops that merge organizational management skills with rights-based advocacy. Participants form lasting coalitions and conduct effective advocacy on their communities’ priority issues.
Asia Catalyst's Regional Rights Training Program [5] builds strong coalitions of like-minded CBOs through capacity building and implementation of human rights analysis, documentation and advocacy on a single thematic issues uniting CBOs across Asia.
In 2015 Asia Catalyst was supporting 16 representatives from eight CBOs from Cambodia, China, Myanmar, and Vietnam to work on ending discrimination in health care settings against people living with HIV (PLHIV) across the region.
Asia Catalyst provides specialized, issue-specific training to individual organizations and small groupswith a specific skill-set need, such as strategic planning, fundraising, or volunteer management. Tailored Coaching [6] for CBOs typically consist of two three-day workshops with Asia Catalyst over a period of 3–6 months. Between workshops, participant organizations complete assignments aimed at implementing the knowledge they have gained at workshops, with Asia Catalyst providing additional mentor support throughout the process.
Tailored coaching focuses especially on groups from marginalized communities, such as sex workers, drug users, LGBT people, and people living with HIV/AIDS. Much of the work has focused on grassroots groups in the People’s Republic of China, as well as groups in Korea, Thailand, and Myanmar (Burma). Asia Catalyst’s approach uses tools that have been developed in the field with input from their marginalized groups, and helps each group to develop strategic plans, project timelines, budgets, and volunteer management systems. Once this foundation is established, groups may be assisted in developing rights documentation and advocacy projects, working on such issues as discrimination, criminalization, and access to health services. Asia Catalyst trains groups to advocate with local and national officials, the United Nations, and to participate in international meetings.[ citation needed ]
Asia Catalyst partners with local groups in China to conduct qualitative research to document human rights abuses that affect the right to health. These reports draw on international human rights standards and local laws to make policy recommendations. Asia Catalyst’s advocacy work has focused on compensation for victims of the AIDS epidemic, as well as discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS, and rights issues facing people who use drugs and sex workers. [7]
Advocacy projects have been successful in achieving media attention. Asia Catalyst's December 2013 report on Custody and Education, an arbitrary detention system for female sex workers in China, was featured on the front page of the New York Times , [8] as well as in prominent Asian and international newspapers including The Guardian , The Wall Street Journal , [9] The South China Morning Post, [10] and The Taipei Times . [11] Its December 2014 research on the living conditions of transgender female sex workers in Beijing and Shanghai was also published in the LGBTQ Policy Journal at the Harvard Kennedy School. [12]
Asia Catalyst is governed by a board of directors, which provides support and guidance for program direction and development. The board is led by Chair and Treasurer Yvonne Y. F. Chan, and includes Minky Worden of Human Rights Watch and Sara L.M. Davis, the organization's first executive director.
Asia Catalyst's executive director is Charmain Mohamed, an experienced human rights advocate and activist, who has lived and worked in Asia for most of 15 years. She has worked for the UN, Human Rights Watch and the Norwegian Refugee Council, both in emergency contexts and on long-term issues, in countries such as Indonesia, East Timor, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and, most recently in Palestine. She holds a Masters in Human Rights Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and a BA (Hons.) in Southeast Asian Studies and Indonesian Language from the University of Hull. Charmain is fluent in English, Indonesian, and Malay.
Asia Catalyst, a 501(c)3 registered charity in the United States, undergoes an independent audit annually and files information returns with various governmental regulatory agencies. The organization’s resources come from contributions from individuals, foundations, and government funding.
Among its most significant past and present supporters are the Open Society Foundations, The Levi Strauss Foundation, National Endowment for Democracy, the Swedish International Development Agency, the German Embassy in Beijing, UNAIDS, and the U.S. State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.
A sex worker is a person who provides sex work, either on a regular or occasional basis. The term is used in reference to those who work in all areas of the sex industry.
Taiwan's epidemic of HIV/AIDS began with the first case reported in December 1984. On 17 December 1990 the government promulgated the AIDS Prevention and Control Act. On 11 July 2007, the AIDS Prevention and Control Act was renamed the HIV Infection Control and Patient Rights Protection Act.
Scarlet Alliance is Australia's national peak sex worker organisation. It was formed in 1989. As an organisation maintained entirely by current and former sex workers, Scarlet Alliance aims to achieve equality, social, legal, political, cultural and economic justice for workers in the sex industry.
Sex workers' rights encompass a variety of aims being pursued globally by individuals and organizations that specifically involve the human, health, and labor rights of sex workers and their clients. The goals of these movements are diverse, but generally aim to legalize or decriminalize sex work, as well as to destigmatize it, regulate it and ensure fair treatment before legal and cultural forces on a local and international level for all persons in the sex industry.
With less than 0.1 percent of the population estimated to be HIV-positive, Bangladesh is a low HIV-prevalence country.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Ukraine is one of the fastest-growing epidemics in the world. Ukraine has one of the highest rates of increase of HIV/AIDS cases in Eastern Europe and highest HIV prevalence outside Africa. Experts estimated in August 2010 that 1.3 percent of the adult population of Ukraine was infected with HIV, the highest in all of Europe. Late 2011 Ukraine numbered 360,000 HIV-positive persons. Between 1987 and late 2012 27,800 Ukrainians died of AIDS. In 2012 tests revealed 57 new cases of HIV positive Ukrainians each day and 11 daily AIDS-related deaths.
The first HIV/AIDS case in Malaysia made its debut in 1986. Since then, HIV/AIDS has become one of the country's most serious health and development challenges. As of 2020, the Ministry of Health estimated that 87 per cent of an estimated 92,063 people living with HIV (PLHIV) in Malaysia were aware of their status, 58 per cent of reported PLHIV received antiretroviral therapy, and 85 per cent of those on antiretroviral treatment became virally suppressed. Despite making positive progress, Malaysia still fell short of meeting the global 2020 HIV goals of 90-90-90, with a scorecard of 87-58-85.
“Think Positive” is a Lebanese association established in 2009 by young activists who have been working hard to serve their society by raising awareness among youths and marginalized groups. It started its activities with fighting HIV/AIDS, Drug Use, Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Stigma and Discrimination. It has launched the regional campaign against HIV+ Phobia in collaboration with 10 partners at International, Regional and National levels and conducted many activities and projects under the main theme of the campaign.
The Naz Foundation (India) Trust is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in that country that works on HIV/AIDS and sexual health. It is based in the Indian capital of New Delhi.
Discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS or serophobia is the prejudice, fear, rejection, and stigmatization of people with HIV/AIDS. Marginalized, at-risk groups such as members of the LGBTQ+ community, intravenous drug users, and sex workers are most vulnerable to facing HIV/AIDS discrimination. The consequences of societal stigma against PLHIV are quite severe, as HIV/AIDS discrimination actively hinders access to HIV/AIDS screening and care around the world. Moreover, these negative stigmas become used against members of the LGBTQ+ community in the form of stereotypes held by physicians.
Yugoslav Youth Association Against AIDS – Youth of JAZAS is non-profit, humanitarian organization committed to HIV prevention and support to the people living with HIV. Ever since its establishment in 1994, it has continuously been implementing projects of peer education, social and psychological support, protection of human rights, promoting voluntary activism, distribution of condoms etc.
Aditya Bandopadhyay is a lawyer and LGBTQ rights activist in India, helping to challenge anti-sodomy laws, establishing advocacy organizations and providing legal services to HIV/AIDS organizations.
Founded in 1999, Alliance India is a non-governmental organisation operating in partnership with civil society, government and communities to support sustained responses to HIV in India that protect rights and improve health. Complementing the Indian national programme, we build capacity, provide technical support and advocate to strengthen the delivery of effective, innovative, community-based HIV programmes to vulnerable populations: sex workers, men who have sex with men (MSM), transgender people, hijras, people who inject drugs (PWID), and people living with HIV.
Sara L.M. Davis, PhD ("Meg"), is a human rights advocate, author and researcher.
Cheryl Overs is a founder and former first director of the Prostitutes Collective of Victoria, the Scarlet Alliance in Australia and the Global Network of Sex Work Projects. Born in Melbourne, Australia in 1957 and educated at University High School and La Trobe University. Overs set up organisations, oversaw events and authored texts that established the place of sex workers' rights within the global response to HIV/AIDS.
galck+ formerly The Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya (GALCK), is the national Sexual Orientation Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE) umbrella body, representing LGBTQ+ voices across Kenya.
May Sabai Phyu is a Kachin activist from Burma. She is active in promoting human rights, freedom of expression, peace, justice for Myanmar's ethnic minorities, anti-violence in Kachin State, and lately in combating violence against women and promoting gender equality issues.
Sangama is an LGBT rights group based in Bangalore, India. When it began in 1999, Sangama acted as a documentation center but it has since grown to become an LGBT rights and HIV prevention NGO that mobilizes against sexual harassment and discrimination and conducts HIV prevention seminars and programmes. The organization works with non-English speaking, working class sex workers and LGBT people and people living with HIV (PLHIV) in Karnataka and Kerala.
Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) is an organisation that advocates for the health and human rights of sex workers. It is a private not-for-profit limited company, based in Edinburgh, Scotland, and founded in November 1990. NSWP is a membership organisation, with members from five regions. NSWP publishes resources, including briefing papers, policy briefs, community guides, global and regional reports, smart guides, statements, the Research for Sex Work Journal, and case studies. It supports the decriminalization of sex work.
Dr. Robert Carr was a Trinidadian scholar and human rights activist who dedicated his life to bringing public attention to issues related to stigma and discrimination against persons living with or affected by HIV/AIDS.