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People living with HIV (PLWH), people who use drugs (PUD), those who are released from places of confinement… Those people are often left behind and ignored. They are invisible, pinned to the wall of despair, with a trail of problems that remain unresolved for years, not believing that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Now they know where they can find help. Where they will be understood and will not be neglected. Now the address 14A Omarov Street, Almaty is well known to many people. They pass it on to each other, realizing that for someone it might be the last hope.

Thanks to the harm reduction and methadone programmes, the rate of HIV transmission among injecting drug users went down in 2011-2017. We decided to find out who facilitated implementation of those programmes, fighting for people’s lives.

The Georgian drug policy calls for radical changes. Currently, it is aimed at the strict punishment of drug users and their isolation from the society. Data of the 2016 Council of Europe report show that every third prisoner in Georgia is convicted for drug-related crimes. However, such repressive approaches do not make people quit drugs. In prisons, people suffer from the abstinence syndrome and lose their health as well as years of their lives. Authorities think that the prison “cures” people, but according to the research studies by Human Rights Education and Monitoring Centre (EMC), 89% of drug users go back to drugs after they are released. The rest of them return to their drug using habits within 11 months.

The first results of the COBA-Cohort, a project associated with the COBATEST Network, are now available online. The study is a cohort of HIV-negative men who have sex with men (MSM) tested for HIV in community-based voluntary counselling and STI/HIV testing (CBVCT) in six different European countries. The full report can be read here.

Traditionally, there is an understanding that human right defenders organize actions, protest by the parliament, or we think of them as of those having legal education and regularly going to courts. However, every person can be a human right defender. Each specialist who provides services to vulnerable groups is, in fact, a human rights defender.

Community organizations are often not cooperative: each one deals with specific problems and has its own approaches to work. Nevertheless, the Coalition of Four Communities: people who use drugs, sex-workers, people living with HIV, lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people is developing and gaining strength in Kyrgyzstan. Consolidation began three years ago without any financial support. The goal is to make the participation of communities in solving the problems of their groups meaningful, to fight against HIV, to reduce stigma and discrimination. Below we discussed the experience of interaction, successes and plans with the representatives of the Coalition.