Vulnerable Communities

CVC’s concern is with groups that are socially marginalised and have limited or no place at the table. These groups, its ‘vulnerable communities’, the coalition defines as:

Subordinate and/or excluded populations who — in the absence of adequate social protection systems because they participate in behaviours deemed socially problematic, delinquent or criminal — are unable to challenge their social status. Subject to hostile stereotyping, they find their struggle against HIV and AIDS constrained by the fundamental character of the economic, social, cultural and political systems within which they live. These populations include sex workers, substance users, inmates, men who have sex with men, mobile populations, youth in difficult circumstances, orphans and other children placed at increased social risk by HIV and AIDS.

Our work on the ground makes it clear that gender, youth, language differences, poverty, disability, and being HIV-positive worsen the social status of these groups.

The broad guidelines in the Caribbean Regional Strategic Framework for HIV/AIDS 2002 – 2006 (RSF) serve as the basis upon which CVC has chosen the groups it seeks to work with. The RSF calls for particular attention to be paid to especially vulnerable groups in national and regional responses to HIV and AIDS. For instance, it seeks to ensure that HIV/STI policies and appropriate services are available for prisoners and mobile populations within the region, and supports the establishment of regional networks of sex workers and men who have sex with men in order to strengthen work in prevention and care among them. It also enjoins countries to gather data on drug use and HIV/STI transmission in order to design appropriate prevention and care strategies for substance users.

Although members of vulnerable populations are found at all levels of Caribbean society, the majority do not wish to be marked as such, since once marked, they are likely to be pushed to the margins of society. We expect that in the new regional and national strategies for the Caribbean, work with these populations will play a more central role and that the contribution of civil society, which has the expertise and the relationships of trust built up over years of working with these populations, will also be more tangibly appreciated. We see advocacy and support for this as an important part of our work.