Creating a Public Space and Dialogue on Sexuality and Rights: A Case Study from Bangladesh

"Methodologies of engagement were not always planned ahead of time but designed and implemented as needed to address emerging concerns and demands as the coalition of interested stakeholders grew."

This article presents and examines the experience of linking research on sexuality and rights to active engagement in advocacy with sexual minorities in a challenging context. It describes and analyses a research-based engagement by a university school of public health in Bangladesh aimed at raising public debate on sexuality and rights and making issues such as discrimination more visible to policymakers and other key stakeholders in a challenging context. Building on its local research knowledge, the BRAC University team hosted meetings, workshops, forums, and public dialogues to open up discussions of sexuality among a wide range of stakeholders using positive and human rights framings and as part of a broader conception of sexual and reproductive health rights that starts from local understandings of rights. Organisers used research to get difficult and controversial issues into the domain of public debate in a developing country which is predominantly Muslim and socially conservative.

Specifically, the research team worked to create a platform to broaden discussions on sexuality and rights by building on a number of research activities on rural and urban men's and women's sexual health concerns and on changing concepts of sexuality and understandings of sexual rights among specific population groups in Dhaka city, including sexual minorities (e.g., men who have sex with men (MSM) or lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals). Linked to this ongoing process of improving the evidence base, there has been a series of learning and capacity building activities consisting of training workshops, meetings, conferences, and dialogues. These brought together different configurations of stakeholders: members of sexual minorities, academics, service providers, advocacy organisations, media, and policymakers.

According to organisers, this process contributed to developing more effective advocacy strategies through challenging representations of sexuality and rights in the public domain. "The process described in this paper contributed to effecting change in three...structural areas....The first was widening and strengthening the base of support for advocacy on sexuality and rights through bringing together key actors who were in a position to influence the wider climate, such as the media. The second was strengthening alliances, through providing platforms and spaces for allies to come together. This was done by assessing strategic opportunities and building sustained alliances and partnerships with media, activists, academics and sexual minority groups. The third was through contributing to shifts in social norms around sexuality through creating a more open climate of discussion and dialogue in a wider range of arenas."

That said, the article cites challenges, such as the persistent problem of how to track more subtle changes, as well as changes in behaviours and attitudes among stakeholders and policymakers - given the silence surrounding many of these issues.