Organisations and Networks - India
Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore
Alternative Law Forum is a legal service provider to groups and people marginalised on the basis of class, caste, disability, gender or sexuality. ALF utilises an approach that integrates advocacy with critical research, alternative dispute resolution, pedagogic interventions and maintaining sustained legal interventions in various social issues. They utilise an interdisciplinary dialogue of the law and its interpretations through research, publications, public education, advocacy, and developing training materials.
Creating Resources for Empowerment in Action (CREA), New Delhi
CREA empowers women to articulate, demand and access their human rights by enhancing women’s leadership and building networks at the local, regional and international levels through training, advocacy and research. For CREA, leadership is a process through which women assert their rights by continually evaluating relevant experiences, questioning their roles in society, challenging power structures and effectively catalysing positive social change. CREA works on issues of sexuality, sexual and reproductive rights, violence against women, human rights and social justice.
Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC), Calcutta
DMSC is a forum exclusively of sex workers and their children set up to create solidarity and collective strength among a larger community of sex workers, forge a positive identity for themselves, and facilitate a space for acting on their own behalf. The operational activities of the programme are designed around centralised clinical services, which are supported by a team of outreach workers who are all sex workers. DMSC is involved in crisis mitigation on behalf of its sex-worker members and has been taking steps to improve their immediate working conditions. They operate a helpline, mainly for seropositive sex workers and their families to help them cope with the social and psychological traumas associated with being HIV-positive. The collective is also involved in a variety of advocacy initiatives designed to articulate their rights as citizens.
Humjinsi, Mumbai
Humjinsi is a lesbian and bisexual women's group that is a part of India Centre for Human Rights and Law. The organisation has a telephone helpline, a resource centre, works on ways to increase awareness of lesbian and bisexual women in India, and helps to organise "Larzish - An International Film Festival of Sexuality and Gender Pluralities". There is no formal website for Humjinsi, but a web search on Humjinsi and Larzish will give more information about the organisation.
Lawyers Collective, New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore
The Lawyer's Collective provides free legal services, conducts advocacy and policy research on legal and human rights issues, and develops publications, documentation and trainings through their HIV and AIDS Unit and Women's Rights Division. The organisation produces a variety of public education material on the rights of HIV-positive people and conducts public education campaigns to raise awareness on various issues relating to HIV and AIDS, same-sex relationships, domestic violence, and stigma and discrimination related to these issues.
The NAZ Foundation's mission is to raise awareness to prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS and providing support to those affected by it, with sensitivity and confidentiality. Naz Foundtion works with men who have sex with men, truckers, women and children. It runs the only care home for HIV Positive women and children in New Delhi. Its work involves prevention strategies, care and support, research, and advocacy. Issues around advocacy include collaborating with several NGOs in India calling for the repeal of anti-sodomy laws.
The Pratyay Gender Trust is a sexuality rights initiative that was started in 1997-98 by members of Calcutta’s kothi, hijra and other gender non-conforming and transgender women who remain excluded from the mainstay of broad human rights movements. Pratyay aims at empowering transgender women to live their lives with dignity, free from violence & discrimination.
PRISM, New Delhi
PRISM works on issues concerning sexual minorities through participation in collaborative policy/advocacy initiatives, public education campaigns, and building alliances with other marginalised groups. PRISM also works on expanding the conceptual dialogue on sexuality by facilitating spaces where links to several other issues, such as class, caste, gender, and norms are debated. There is no formal website, but they can be contacted at prism_delhi@yahoo.co.in
Sampada Grameen Mahila Sanstha (SANGRAM), Sangli, Maharashtra
SANGRAM has been working with women in prostitution in seven districts of south Maharashtra and north Karnataka since 1992. While it started as a peer-based condom intervention programme, SANGRAM's programmes have now broadened to include the larger community, especially women and adolescents. In 1996, SANGRAM's peer education programme broadened into VAMP, a collective of women in prostitution. VAMP aims to consolidate a common identity among the women and empower them to find their own solutions. The collective aims to represent the interests of its constituents by arbitrating community disputes, lobbying with the police, developing policy and advocacy campaigns, helping women access government schemes and developing leadership potential. VAMP circulates a quarterly newsletter, which can be accessed at: http://www.vampnews.org/about_us.html.
Sangama aims to assist sexuality minorities (lesbians, bisexuals, homosexuals, gays, kothis, hijras, transgender people and others who are discriminated against due to their sexual orientation/gender identity) to live their lives with self acceptance, self respect and dignity; to bring sexuality, sexual orientation/identity and gender identity into the realm of public discourse and link it to gender, human rights and development issues/movements in India. Sangama's activities include policy/advocacy initiatives, developing IEC materials, maintaining a library and documentation centre, and publications.
TARSHI (Talking About Reproductive and Sexual Health Issues), New Delhi
Guided by the vision that all people have the right to sexual well-being and to a self-affirming and enjoyable sexuality, TARSHI works towards expanding sexual and reproductive choices in people's lives in an effort to enable them to enjoy lives of dignity, freedom from fear, infection, and reproductive and sexual health problems. TARSHI's activities include running a telephone helpline on sexuality, implementing public education and advocacy initiatives, developing and disseminating publications materials on sexuality issues, conducting the Sexuality and Rights Institute (in collaboration with CREA), and hosting The South and Southeast Asia Resource Centre on Sexuality.
The Humsafar Trust (HST) is a community-based organisation of self identified Gay men, MSM, transgender people, hijras and LGBT people. HST manages projects on prevention, care, support and treatment reaching out to over 9,000 MSM and transgender people in the city.
‘Voices Against 377’ is a coalition of Non Governmental Organisations (NGO) and progressive groups based in Delhi. It is a point of intersection and dialogue between various social movements that these groups represent, where a united voice is being articulated against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which criminalizes private consensual sexual acts deemed to be against the order of nature.