Caribbean Vulnerable Communities gets recognition in Canada

Executive Director of the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities (CVC) Ian McKnight is hoping that entities in the region, including governments, will follow the lead of The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and Human Rights Watch.

The North American entity will, on Thursday, honour the late founder of CVC, Dr Robert Carr, who died in early May, and the organisation he founded in 2004. The CVC is a Caribbean umbrella group of frontline entities and individuals working with vulnerable populations.

Strongest in countries like Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, St Lucia, The Bahamas, and the Dominican Republic, CVC has advocates in other islands. In Antigua & Barbuda, CVC works closely with, among other groups and agencies, the Directorate of Gender Affairs and Women Against Rape (WAR).

"The award is presented by the two groups each year to highlight outstanding contributions that protect the human rights and dignity of people living with HIV and communities affected by HIV, in particular marginalised communities facing human rights abuses that fuel and exacerbate the HIV pandemic," a press release noted. "To be honest, sometimes, in our region, people look up and take note because outsiders are taking note," McKnight told The Daily OBSERVER Tuesday.

His hope, to be specific, is not for the region to award Dr Carr or the CVC, but for people here to recognise their work and heed the messages. He called the Canadian acknowledgement a "huge feather" in the CVC's cap.

"It brings front and centre, not just the work we're doing, but the issues we're associated with. It says that the international arena is looking on, is supporting the work that we are doing here.

"It says the international arena is willing to finance some of what we have to do here, inclusive of challenging some of our countries, the laws on the books … some of our governments are going to be uncomfortable about that but it has to be done," McKnight said.

Some of the legislation the CVC executive director referenced include prohibition of commercial sex work and same-sex relationships, as well as public health laws in some islands that makes HIV a reportable disease and others that prevent people who are HIV positive from entering and/or accessing treatment in other countries.

Asked about the importance of the work CVC does, and how, as he charges, regional governments place segments of their populations at risk, McKnight referenced support and advocacy for the marginalised for the first question, and stigma and discrimination and patriarchy for the second.

"The common strand that runs through is that of the work being compounded because of who these groups are. They are the socially excluded, the discarded groups, the groups who are not making it to the dining table, the groups who if you are not vigilant, not even our governments will attract monies to help them," McKnight said. Of the honour for Dr Carr specifically, McKnight recalled that he founded CVC "to be able to exact more resources" to help the vulnerable communities.

"He felt unless there was a coming together of people working with these populations, to be able to have a stronger advocacy voice, we would be losing the battle," McKnight said. The CVC website lists as vulnerable communities, inmates, men who have sex with men, mobile populations, children orphaned and otherwise made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS, sex workers, substance users and "youth on the block."