INGOs in India must reject US-required discrimination in funding

[Guest guest]

Date: 17 May 2005

All National and International NGOs operating in India

An Open Letter from Usha Multipurpose ative Society Ltd. (Kolkata, India)

Appealing INGOs in India to reject US-required limitations on funding use

Dear All,

We the undersigned are members of Usha Multipurpose ative Society Ltd.

Usha is the largest sex worker-owned and sex worker-run micro-credit

cooperative society in India. Usha ative was formed in 1995 in response to

sex workers' demands for economic security and out of the

realisation that for HIV/AIDS interventions to succeed among sex workers, we

need to be able to refuse unsafe sex, and to be able

to do the latter, we need economic security, as (a) economic insecurity keep us

disempowered and in the clutches of trade controllers, ( in absence of

economic security we cannot exercise options and cannot exercise choices whether

to continue or not in sex work or to seek other occupation.

In addition, our access to financial institutional services were (and are)

systematically denied by policy-makers and institutional authorities and their

employees because we are not cnsidered " equal " in terms of rights and social

entitlements to other citizens.

We felt very strongly that this discrimination based on sexual preferences or

on the issue of buying or selling sex services is one

of the major hindrances in implementing successful HIV programmes among sex

workers and other marginalised people.

Usha began with just 13 sex worker members in 1995. Today, our membership

strength is more than 7000 sex workers. In the intervening years, Usha has

provided loans to sex workers, is the largest social marketer of condoms in 47

sex worker intervention sites in West Bengal, has changed lives of hundreds of

sex workers and their children by providing them economic security,

skills-training, support and marketing for handicrafts manufactured by them,

and by fair-price marketing of essential supplies and

consumables. The success story of Usha ative is now the talking point of

the cooperative society movement of West Bengal

and India.

We were able to collectivise, manage and own the co-operative businesses as our

potential as change agents were respected and we were accepted as part of the

solution to the HIV epidemic as opposed to being 'the vectors' of the virus.

Usha could grow and achieve this success as we began our journey as sex worker

peer educators and activists of an STD/HIV intervention programme targeting sex

workers: the Sonagachi Project. It is our strong realisation that successful

interventions to prevent STI/HIV

among sex workers cannot be a vertical health programmes, but must address,

challenge and alter social structures both within and outside sex work milieu

and develop holistic intervention models that address real needs of sex worker

community and empower them to take charge of their lives, and not view us

through the 'lens of morality'.

It is our firm belief, that the US Act HR 2620, which declares that US

Government funds will be denied to INGOs and other bodies that support sex

worker initiatives in tackling HIV/AIDS, will set back successes achieved by sex

worker organisations and their support groups in containing the HIV/AIDS

epidemic worldwide. This very process of denying or abrogating the rights of

individuals and the role of human agency in dealing with HIV or any other health

issue is undemocratic and inhuman.

More than that, the process, of stigmatising and further marginalising an

already marginalised community will jeopardise HIV programmes. We, as citizens

of India and the world, should have the right to raise our voices and to

express our concerns related to any issue that has implications on our lives and

professions.

This authoritarian and high-handed behaviour goes against the basic tenets of

respect and dignity of citizens. We strongly urge you to stand against this

unilateral and authoritative pronouncement and

practice steered by the most powerful nation in the world.

Furthermore, such Acts would deny individual sex workers choices to change their

lives for better, make them vulnerable to pressures from the trade controllers,

that include a section of police and administration in our country. In short,

the punitive measures as imposed by this unjust law will push good HIV

prevention initiatives

against the wall and let the epidemic grow untrammelled.

We therefore appeal to all NGOs and civil society organisations working in India

to protest against this law and refuse to sign unjust clauses that deny

assistance to 'best practice' programmes.

As Indians, are we going to bow down to such highhandedness?

In Solidarity,

Rekha Chatterjee, (President)

Sujata Dutta (Secretary)

Usha Multipurpose ative Society Ltd.

Kolkata (India)

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