Targeting the Invisible World Of Men Who Have Sex With Men

via Outwords, by Peter Carlyle-Gordge

Ask any outreach worker in the fight against HIV transmission and you’ll find one of the hardest at-risk groups to reach is MSM, or men who have sex with men.

Men in this group don’t necessarily identify as gay. Some may be married to women and have families. Some may simply avoid defining their sexual orientation and it is often hard to pinpoint where they gather or connect.

Now, if reaching the MSM group is challenging here, consider its near impossibility in such homophobic places as Africa, a place still plagued by superstition, repression and an outright burning hostility to any sexual practices beyond the vanilla heterosexual variety. In many Islamic countries such as Iran and Iraq, being attracted to the same sex may bring instant death by a mob, or less instant death after a shameful “trial” in an Islamic court, which may sentence you to be hanged, often in public.

Attitudes to same-sex attraction in Africa aren’t much better, with a nasty, often violent reaction to same-sex couplings – an official kind of homophobia that is encouraged by the Neanderthal and ignorant Catholic and Anglican churches. Indeed, the current worldwide Anglican communion is deeply split on same-sex rights, thanks largely to the Archbishop of Canterbury kowtowing in fear to the outspoken black African bishops who despise homosexuality and claim God does, too.

You don’t need to go far to stack up evidence of this official homophobia. The president of Iran famously came to the U.S. and told a university audience that same-sex dalliances did not exist in Iran. The evidence in the form of beatings and hangings of gay men tends to undermine his insane statement.

Read the rest.


[If an item is not written by an IRMA member, it should not be construed that IRMA has taken a position on the article's content, whether in support or in opposition.]

Persecuted for Being Gay

via The Guardian, stories compiled by Gay Middle East

Bisi Alimi, from Nigeria (an IRMA member!)

In 2002, I was at university in Nigeria and standing for election. A magazine wrote about me and exposed me as being gay. This led the university to set up a disciplinary committee. I was very nearly dismissed. When I did graduate, people wanted to refuse me my certificate on the grounds that I did not have good enough morals to be an alumnus of the university. While this was going on, the then-president, Olusegun Obasanjo, declared that there were no homosexuals in Nigeria, and that such a thing would not be allowed in the country.

I talked with a friend of mine, who is a famous Nigerian talkshow host, about challenging this opinion. Nobody had come out publicly before. So, in October 2004, I appeared on her breakfast show, New Dawn with Funmi Iyanda". I talked about my sexuality, the burden of the HIV epidemic in the gay community.

The reaction was immediate and violent. I was subjected to brutality from the police and the community. I was disowned by my family and lost many friends, including in the gay community. They were afraid to know me. I was isolated, with no support and no job. The TV show was taken off the air by the government. It led to the introduction of the Same Sex Prohibition bill of 2006. All I had done was say who I was. Three years later I appeared on the BBC World Service. I repeated what I had said on television in Nigeria and suggested my government was using attacks on homosexuality to help cover up its own corruption.

On my arrival back to Nigeria, I was arrested, detained and beaten by the police. For a month, until I fled back to the UK in April 2007, my life was in constant danger.

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 [If an item is not written by an IRMA member, it should not be construed that IRMA has taken a position on the article's content, whether in support or in opposition.]

Narrow Window To Avert HIV Epidemics Among MSM in Middle East and North Africa

Via AIDSMap, by Michael Carter.

HIV epidemics are emerging among men who have sex with men (MSM) in a number of Middle Eastern and North African countries, an international team of investigators report in the online journal PLoSMedicine.

Prevalence of HIV was as high as 28% among some populations of MSM in Pakistan, and in 2008 over 50% of new HIV infections in Lebanon were in men who reported anal sex with another man.

High levels of risk behaviour in many countries suggested that there was the potential for further spread of HIV.

Alarmed by their findings, the investigatorssuggest “there is an urgent need to expand HIV surveillance and access to testing, prevention, and treatment services in a rapidly narrowing window of opportunity to prevent the worst of HIV transmission among MSM in the Middle East and North Africa.”

Worldwide, MSM are one of the groups most affected by HIV. The epidemic in most industrialised countries is focused on MSM, and research conducted in sub-Saharan Africa has found evidence of large but generally hidden MSM epidemics. Moreover, epidemics in MSM are well established and growing in Latin America and South East Asia.

In contrast, little is known about the MSM HIV epidemic in Middle Eastern and North African countries. Sex between men is often highly stigmatised in this setting, and in five countries homosexuality is punishable by death.

Given this lack in knowledge, a team of investigators lead by Dr Ghina Mumtaz undertook a systematic literature review to gain a better understanding of the HIV prevalence in MSM, their risk behaviour and knowledge of HIV in 23 North African and Middle Eastern Countries.

The authors believe their study “provides an integrated analysis and synthesis of the evidence to address the gap in our knowledge of what could potentially materialise as the key risk group for HIV sexual transmission in this region in the next decade.”

A total of 26 studies were included in the investigators’ analysis. They defined MSM as men who had insertive or receptive anal sex. However, the researchers emphasised that there was a huge diversity in MSM self-identity, role and behaviour in the region.

Overall, the prevalence of MSM behaviour was consistently between 2-3%. However, in some populations such as truck drivers (9%-49%) or street children (15%-77%) it was considerably higher.

Read the rest here.

[If an item is not written by an IRMA member, it should not be construed that IRMA has taken a position on the article's content, whether in support or in opposition.]

HIV stigma stifles outreach in Arab states

via Arabian Business.com

We have to admit this is home grown ... Deportation doesn't help. Just having someone with HIV doesn't mean they are automatically spreading the virus.

Only 10 to 14 percent of the 400,000 people infected with HIV in the Middle East and North Africa get treatment due to the stigma and discrimination that has made people wary of being tested, a UNAIDS official said.

Read the rest.

New HIV Report Turns Up Some Surprises

Via IRIN

Statistics on the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the Middle East are hard to come by but a new study launched on 28 June in the United Arab Emirates has attempted to gather all existing data into one place and add some analysis and action points for policymakers.

In all previous reports we thought there was no HIV data from this region. But there turned out to be lots of data here, said Laith Abu Raddad, director of the Biostatistics and Biomathematic Research Core at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar and the principal author of the study (not yet available online).

For the full story click here.

Sex Activist Wedad Lootah Challenges Taboos in Dubai

“Many men who had anal sex with men before marriage want the same thing with their wives, because they don’t know anything else,” Ms. Lootah said. “This is one reason we need sex education in our schools.

Challenging Sex Taboos, With Help From the Koran

via the New York Times, by Robert F. Worth

WEDAD LOOTAH does not look like a sexual activist. A Muslim and a native Emirati, she wears a full-length black niqab — with only her brown eyes showing through narrow slits — and sprinkles her conversation with quotes from the Koran.

Yet she is also the author of what for the Middle East is an amazingly frank new book of erotic advice in which she celebrates the female orgasm, confronts taboo topics like homosexuality and urges Arabs to transcend the backward traditions that limit their sexual happiness.

Read the rest.