Religious communities and HIV prevention: An intervention study using a human rights-based approach

Abstract

Religious communities have been a challenge to HIV prevention globally. Focusing on the acceptability component of the right to health, this intervention study examined how local Catholic, Evangelical and Afro-Brazilian religious communities can collaborate to foster young people's sexual health and ensure their access to comprehensive HIV prevention in their communities in Brazil. This article describes the process of a three-stage sexual health promotion and HIV prevention initiative that used a multicultural human rights approach to intervention. Methods included 27 in-depth interviews with religious authorities on sexuality, AIDS prevention and human rights training of 18 young people as research-agents, who surveyed 177 youth on the same issues using self-administered questionnaires. The results, analysed using a rights-based perspective on health and the vulnerability framework, were discussed in daylong interfaith workshops. Emblematic of the collaborative process, workshops are the focus of the analysis. Our findings suggest that this human rights framework is effective in increasing inter-religious tolerance and in providing a collective understanding of the sexuality and prevention needs of youth from different religious communities, and also serves as a platform for the expansion of state AIDS programmes based on laical principles.

Keywords:

• sexuality
• human rights
• youth
• HIV prevention
• religion

Acknowledgements

This article is based on data collected from the study Religious Responses to HIV/AIDS in Brazil, a project sponsored by PROSARE2006/CCR/Brasil and US Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Grant number 1 R01 HD050118, principal investigator Richard G. Parker). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development or the National Institutes of Health. Additional information about the project can be obtained via e-mail from <[email protected]>.

Notes

1. Religious Responses to AIDS in Brazil/US National Institute of Health, 1 R01 HD05118-01.

2. Evangelic communities in Rio self-defined as the Assembly of God, the Contemporary Church and the Church of the Evangelical Community of Rebirth in God; in Recife, as Methodists, Assembly of God, Episcopal Anglican; in São Paulo as Episcopal Anglican, Assembly of God, Adventist Church of the Pledge.

3. It could mean ‘understanding their sufferings’ through hearing and prayer, a celebration of sexual diversity or going up to rituals of conversion from homosexuality to heterosexual practices. Acolhimento comes into play when the tense contrast between traditional values and the contemporary embodied perspectives on sexual and reproductive rights is more common, and as tradition and contemporary discourses are formulated and re-formulated constantly throughout the subject's lifetime and trajectory.

4. See Parker (2009) for an in-depth description of sexuality and social meaning attributed to Carnaval (the festival of the ‘flesh’), a yearly celebration where people throughout the country dance, parade, and often express sexuality in public areas.

5. NAP funds Gay Parades to mitigate sexual discrimination related to HIV infection, for example. The Gay Pride Parade, an emblematic action of LGBT movement in Brazil for more than decade, has since 2006 included more than 2 million people in São Paulo, making it the biggest in the world.