The main function of Galck is to enhance the ability of the coalition members to best attain their goals and objectives. This is done by way of providing office space, coordinating their activities and offering technical support to the groups. Galck also provides a drop in space in which curious or questioning members of the LGBTI community can come, read some literature about LGBTI issues, discuss with other persons and/or use the free internet facilities.
PROGRAM AREAS
In the next two years the following three programmatic areas will take priority:
- Access to Health Care
- Strategic organizing for non-criminalization
- Holistic empowerment.
Focus on Health: The few studies done on MSM activity in the country point at very grave seroprevalence levels among the MSM, typically a group that would also include gay men in Kenya. The Kilifi study points at 43%. There is agreement that more studies need to be done and effective prevention, care and treatment too need to be devised with the hope of attaining universal access. Latest data from National Aids Control Council points out that 15% of all new HIV infections in the country are MSM related. For a population that is typically very small (perhaps less than 5%), these figures should be worrisome.
ISHTAR MSM is the group that is primarily focused on HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment, which also includes STIs in Kenya. Support to this group will be important as it faces a mammoth task of changing minds and hearts of health sector practitioners who are more than ready to deny services to LGBTI persons. Other groups within Galck too will play supportive roles even as they work to further their own goals and objectives.
Focus on Equal Rights: Decriminalization is perhaps the most urgent Rights issue that we have in Kenya today. Every time the LGBTI groups ask for inclusion even in health services, the common answer we get is that “what we are advocating for is a criminal behaviour.” Moreover criminalization also opens doors to a lot abuse of other rights, like rights to privacy, equal protection by the law, right to self determination etc.
Lately the culture of blackmail and extortion has become so entrenched that some LGBTI persons prefer to give on monthly basis a portion of their income to avoid being outed to their families and work colleagues. This is one area where there is also a significant disagreement among the LGBTI rights activists on the right approach. While some are for a more militant approach, saying as they do, that these are our rights which are inalienable, hence we do not need to beg for but demand and claim, others are for a more diplomatic approach, calling for a graduated and incremental strategies.
In the next two years one of the principle strategies will be to make the LGBTI community members an important “voting demographic.” If we succeed by doing that, come 2012, we shall have policy makers and politicians beginning to pay attention to issues that matter to us - and hopefully deleting from the penal code, sections 162 - 165, that should never have been in the first place.
Given the tribal voting pattern however it will be interesting to see if LGBTI persons care enough for their rights to break with their tribesmen and women and vote for a more LGBTI friendly candidate or party - this calls for civic education, a task we shall gladly undertake at Galck.
Holistic Empowerment: It is a fact that a great number of our members live under squalid conditions. It has been said time and time again that they are poor not because they are gay or lesbian, but because they are Kenyans. And 54% of the Kenyan population lives below the poverty line. That may very well be true. The LGBTI identity however provides an opportunity for social capital that can be harnessed for holistic - multifaceted empowerment.
It is a fact that in Africa poverty is a condition that leaves people more vulnerable to other forms of abuses, stigmatization and denial of basic rights. In the next two years we shall attempt to bridge the gap between LGBTI marginalization and other forms of marginalization.
