We Keep Moving Forward: Results of ECOM's Work Over 2022

2022 is coming to an end, and as usual, we want to look back on the past 12 months and sum up the results. This year hasn't been an easy one for any country in our region. Before we had time to fully overcome all the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, our region was engulfed by the largest war on the European continent since 1945. And this war has affected all the countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

But our work remains consistent and resilient, even in these uncertain times. We've managed to do a lot in 2022 and we thank our ECOM members and partners for fruitful cooperation.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to cover all our achievements over this year in one article, so we picked only a few of them. But we're already working on ECOM's annual report, in which we'll talk in detail about all our successes over the past year.

Capacity development of ECOM's members and partners

Training for trainers held — on the specifics of conducting online events

For the first time in the EECA region, ECOM held unique training for trainers on the specifics of conducting online events.

We taught 19 trainers from among ECOM members who already conduct both offline and online training sessions. During the training, we discussed what types of online training exist, how online training differs from offline training, whether group dynamics change in online training (spoiler: yes!), and what tools we can use.

“Thanks for the amazing training! I didn’t think that online training would be cooler, more effective and exciting than offline. You know this feeling when after watching a movie you leave the cinema and for some time you lose the perception of time and space. Every day after the training, I had exactly this feeling,” says Svetlana, the T9 NSK project for transgender people and their close ones, Russia.
“The skills, tools and practical knowledge gained at this training showed that online training can be interesting, hold the audience's attention, safe, effective and motivational, and life hacks shared by the trainers will help improve the productivity of these training sessions and increase your professional level as a trainer," says Oliver.

More details here.

Meeting of the Regional Working Group of Trans People

The Working Group of Trans People (RGT) on HIV and Sexual Health in Eastern Europe and Central Asia aims to strengthen the participation of the trans community in the response to the HIV epidemic in the EECA region. The RGT includes representatives of the trans community, both individual members of ECOM and representatives of ECOM’s collective members, as well as partners of the coalition.

At the meeting of the Working Group of Trans People, a review and analysis of existing work plans was carried out, as well as a discussion of existing and new challenges, including those related to the war in Ukraine. During the meeting, the participants also developed a new work plan for 2022–2023, taking into account the new reality.

Also, this year, the filming of the movie on the impact of the war on the trans community across the region was completed.

And for the new year, we have planned several studies and an update in the list of RGT members.

2 online courses held on the prevention of emotional and professional burnout

Activism is a sphere in which it's very easy to burn out: due to the lack of quick results, the constant feeling of danger for one's life and health, insufficient wages and unstable funding.

We want the activists from our region to be in a resourceful state and be able to continue their activities and keep on fighting for human rights.

So, we conducted two online courses for them with individual support from psychologists.

A total of 91 people took part in two streams. We're glad that we can support the psychological health of our members and partners.

Human rights

Training on monitoring rights violations

One of ECOM's tools to achieve the goal of creating a favorable legal environment is to collect data on human rights violations of LGBT people in the region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Therefore, we continue to train more and more monitors in order to monitor human rights violations.

We conducted a training session on monitoring and documenting human rights violations of LGBT people for 18 activists from 5 countries of the EECA region.

For high-quality work of monitors, the following items were created and distributed:

memo for ECOM's monitors;
algorithm for documenting and entering data into the REAct system for ECOM monitors;
safety instructions;
webinar on digital security for documentors was held;
technical assistance with the identification of cases;
database of legal service providers was updated.

Following the training on monitoring and documenting rights violations, our monitors document and add cases to the REAct database. To date, more than 230 cases of rights violations and discrimination against LGBT people have been registered.

Advocacy at the UN level

In 2022, we continued to prepare and submit reports on rights violations of LGBT people in countries of our region. In just a year, we've submitted the following reports:

to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights — on Kyrgyzstan;
to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights — on Uzbekistan;
to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women — on Azerbaijan;
to the Human Rights Committee — on Georgia;
to the Human Rights Committee — on Kyrgyzstan;
to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights — on Armenia;
to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights — on Tajikistan;
prepared and submitted a report on the EECA region, based on ECOM's data, for the UN Independent Expert on SOGI as part of the call on violations of the right to health;
prepared and submitted a report on the EECA region, based on ECOM's data, for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as part of the call on human rights violations in the context of HIV;
prepared a brief on the situation of LGBT human rights defenders in Tajikistan for the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders;
prepared a position paper on compulsory HIV testing in Uzbekistan; sent letters to the UN structures.

Human rights advocacy

Updated analyses of national legislation related to SOGI and HIV have been prepared and published for the following countries: Moldova, Armenia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

The Regional report has been prepared on violations of the right to health of gays, other MSM and trans* people in the EECA region in 2021, entitled “Surrounded by hate”.

And a report regarding gays in Uzbekistan “Like living on a different planet”.

Health of LGBT communities

Chemsex

This year we've been working to make the topic of chemsex less taboo and to prepare specialists for work with people who practice chemsex.

We've published our “Guide On Working With Chemsex Users”.

On its basis, an online course "Sex that people don't talk about" has been prepared and launched on our educational platform. It's a basic training course for assisting specialists who work with people practicing chemsex.

PrEP Resource Center launched in Central Asia

In April 2022, in Almaty was launched the Resource Center (RC) for pre-exposure prophylaxis of HIV (PrEP), which is a platform to exchange experience and transfer best practices between countries within the region of Central Asia (CA).

This initiative is unique because the RC is a platform for joint learning and exploration of new topics not only for employees of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), but also for medical professionals. The center is also a platform for dialogue between medical experts and community members.

You can read more about the Resource Center here.

Monkeypox

In the region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, only a few cases of the new disease, monkeypox (MPOX), have been reported this year, but experts around the world asked to watch out for the new infection.

ECOM was the first in the EECA region to hold a webinar on this topic, where, together with our partners, we discussed what the LGBT community should know in relation to the spread of the new infection:

Work with trans communities

Mobilize and build the capacity of trans communities

In March, the first meeting in a year and a half with managers of partner organizations was held within the framework of the «TransMap in EECA» project, which is being implemented by ECOM. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss opportunities to expand and strengthen HIV services for trans people in the EECA region through community mobilization and the creation of an enabling environment.

You can read more about the meeting here.

A working meeting of national partners of the «TransMap in EECA» project was held in Yerevan. This was the first meeting bringing together all 14 representatives of the national project partners from Eastern Europe and Central Asia: “New Generation” (Armenia), “Temida” (Georgia), “Kyrgyz Indigo” (Kyrgyzstan), “Cohort” and “Convictus” (Ukraine).

The aim of the training was to increase the effectiveness of the project by improving communication between country team members, and by providing practical knowledge on the TRANSIT and involvement in decision-making.

Leadership school for trans people

The leadership school is a guide to decision-making processes regarding HIV in the countries of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region, teaching methods and tools for community mobilization.

The first of its kind training module "Leadership school for trans* people" includes 14 training sessions that last from 3 to 5 hours:

Our partners conducted national leadership training schools on HIV for the community, which were attended by 91 trans* people.

What the schools have in common is trans people participating as volunteers or paid trainers to run the school or conduct classes. Many trainers are members of previous schools. Some participants became active volunteers, for example in Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Ukraine, some got involved in decision-making, for example in Russia.

Media campaign #МЫПОХОЖИ (#wearealike)

On March 1, 2022, ECOM launched the "Looks like we are alike" media campaign. The campaign was created to increase the visibility of trans people and to show the general public who trans* people are, how they live and why we're all so similar to each other.

The campaign started on TikTok with the publication of videos that feature trans people as the main characters. And on March 31, Trans Day of Visibility, the campaign was launched on Instagram.

Having implemented the campaign, we held a webinar on how to prepare such a large-scale information campaign.

The information presented at the webinar and the #МЫПОХОЖИ campaign itself became a working tool for our partners in the countries where they implemented their information campaigns.

For example, our partners from Georgia, Queer Association “Temida”, launched a media campaign on TikTok.

The media campaign was conceptualized and implemented by trans and non-binary people. They covered important topics in the videos:

Transgender transition, stereotypes about the obligatory masculinity of trans men;
General questions to the respondents;
Stereotypes and misconceptions that exist in society regarding LGBTQI organizations, the problem of associating the pro-Western political course with LGBTQI issues;
Photos before and after the transition;
Questions that one shouldn't ask transgender people;
Video about queer artists;
Employment problem of trans people;
Stereotypes associated with non-binary people in society.

ECOM's communication work

Blogger QUEERathon

The “Blogger QUEERathon” for LGBT youth from Central Asia and Eastern Europe took place in Istanbul from August 30 to September 2.

The QUEERathon is the first, but certainly not the last, training event in this format organized by ECOM for LGBT youth. The goal of the QUEERathon was to improve the knowledge and skills of LGBT youth in relation to effective communication, and the process of conveying information and forming public opinion through blogging and social media.

The event was attended by 13 beginner bloggers from various countries of Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

After the QUEERathon, 6 concepts of LGBT blogs were selected, which are now developing with the financial support of ECOM.

Information campaign for IDAHOBIT

On the occasion of the International Day Against Homo-, Bi- and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT), we opened a call for applications from partners and members of ECOM to conduct information and media campaigns.

Each of the successfully implemented projects changed the world around, making society less homophobic and LGBT people more open.

As part of this campaign, seven different projects were implemented: from training for journalists to information campaigns on TikTok.

You can get acquainted with each project here.

Information campaign «RightTo»

The goal of the #RightTo campaign launched by the SHAG Consortium was to raise awareness of gay people's rights and health around the world.

ECOM has been working on it for the second year, attracting more and more bloggers from the EECA region. This year, 7 new people took part in the campaign: open LGBT persons and allies recorded videos in support of equal rights for LGBT people in our region:

2022 publications:

If you haven't visited our “Library” over this year, we'll share with you useful and interesting documents and studies ECOM has published in 2022: