ROBERT CARR FUND ANNUAL REPORT 2017 From Invisibility to Indivisibility For civil society networks 1 Acknowledgements Author: Danielle Parsons Graphic Design: Studio Odilo Girod Photography: sarahdona.com 2 ANNUAL REPORT 2017 Executive Summary The Robert Carr Fund for civil society networks is the first international pooled funding mechanism which specifically aims to strengthen global and regional HIV civil society and community networks around the world. It was founded in 2012, and honors the life and work of the late Robert Carr. The Robert Carr Fund invests in global and regional civil society networks addressing critical factors in protecting the rights of inadequately served populations (ISPs) 1; scaling up access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support; and assuring that resources are mobilized and utilized appropriately to respond to the global HIV epidemic. The ultimate goal of the Fund is to contribute to improved health, inclusion and social wellbeing for ISPs. To reach this goal, the Robert Carr Fund provides core funding to strengthen the institutional and advocacy capacity of regional and global ISP and civil society networks and/or their consortia. By investing in core and strategic costs to build the organizational and advocacy capacity of networks, the Robert Carr Fund builds the foundation for civil society networks to influence environments, decisions, and key processes, polices and practices that define access of ISPs to health, justice and resources and to ultimately give ISP communities a voice in the global HIV response. In 2017, the Fund adopted a new monitoring and evaluation for learning (MEL) framework, which measures both environmental conditions and outcomes related to grant funding. This report is the first consolidation of findings and results captured by this new framework, measuring major grantee accomplishments for the reporting period of 2016-2017. Building Institutional Capacity The reporting period revealed an environment with some significant threats to ISP networks as institutions, including enforcement of Foreign Agent policies in Eastern and Central Europe, government pressure to close organizations in the Middle East, as well as closing civil society space in the West and threats to funding for sexual and reproductive health programming. In a handful of countries, severe physical security threats were noted, and staff of some organizations reported arbitrary surveillance and harassment. In the face of these challenging conditions, grantees made significant progress, with some such as the HIV Justice Network and Eurasian Key Populations Network (EKHN) achieving registration, and others such as members of the Peers 2 Zero Coalition (P2Z) and the Asia-Pacific Transgender Network (APTN) growing their staff size significantly. Others, such as the International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD, Consortium of Networks of People who Use Drugs), utilized Robert Carr Funds to achieve critical organizational improvement, training management staff and developing quality and accountability systems. 1 ISPs are groups or persons that face a higher HIV risk, mortality and/or morbidity when compared to the general population, and have, at the same time, less access to information and services. They include people living with HIV, gay men and other men who have sex with men, people who use drugs, prisoners, sex workers and transgender persons, but depending on the dynamic of the epidemic and the legal status of these populations may also include women and girls, youth, migrants, and people living in rural areas. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3 Several grantees, including INERELA+, the Canadian National Coalition to Reform HIV Criminalization (HIV Justice Global Consortium), the Eurasian Harm Reduction Association (Eurasian Regional Consortium and Harm Reduction Consortium), and the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC-ARASA Consortium) were able to leverage Robert Carr Funds to successfully generate additional funding from other donors. Grantees, such as those of the Positive Networks Consortium (PNC+), also utilized Robert Carr Fund support to achieve improved representative governance, assuring that boards were democratically elected; and members of the Consortium of MSM and Transgender Networks developed regional advocacy plans to drive movements across countries. Influencing Protection of ISP Rights While 44% of networks reported progress related to policy and legislation around ISP rights during the reporting period, 26% reported no change (which, in many cases meant continued struggles against harmful policies or legislation), and 33% reported regress in the environment. And yet grantees had considerable achievements to report, from the implementation of the Shared Incidents Database by the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition (CVC) leading to the documentation of over one thousand rights violations and seven current legal challenges; to an international campaign led by the Consortium of Networks of People who Use Drugs in response to gross human rights violations and extrajudicial killings in the Philippines; to progress on gender identity laws in Latin America as a result of advocacy by REDLACTRANS. Influencing ISP Access to Services While about 20% of networks reported some regress in ISP access to services, nearly half of net- works reported some progress. Grantees contributed to progress through generation of credible evidence, such as ITPC West Africa’s (ITPC-ARASA Consortium) treatment needs mapping and the African Men for Sexual Health and Rights’ (AMSHeR, Consortium of MSM and Transgender Networks) development of an African Key Populations Scorecard to hold governments to account for their performance against global guidance. Several networks worked to improve quality of services, as well, through development of or training on “implementation tools,” commonly known as the SWIT, MSMIT, TRANSIT and I-DUIT. Yet others reported achieving important improvements to quality of services as a result of their advocacy, including increased access to routine viral load testing in Dominican Republic, Peru and Honduras (ITPC; ITPC-ARASA Consortium); and effective sensitization of hospital staff that has resulted in improved services for trans women (REDLACTRANS) and migrants (CARAM Asia) in Latin America and Asia, respectively. Influencing Resources for ISPs A limited number of grantees are currently engaging in this important area of work, though those who are, are gaining traction. Despite trends of reducing funding from the Global Fund and other external funding sources, there are some indications of increasing government awareness of need for domestic funds. Grantees have worked alongside these trends to contribute to momentum, including the development of a Budget Advocacy Community Guide, the production of reports on funding trends such as The Global State of Harm Reduction Funding by Harm Reduction International (Harm Reduction Consortium), and MSMGF’s (Consortium of MSM and Transgender Networks) conducted monitoring of global spending on HIV and advocated for increased investment into ISP communities. These efforts will be on display at AIDS 2018, through a joint advocacy campaign targeting the sustainability of financing and overcoming barriers to services for all ISPs, put on by the Eurasian Regional Consortium, together with other regional community networks. 4 ANNUAL REPORT 2017 Value of Core Funding from the Robert Carr Fund The heart of the Robert Carr Fund approach is to provide core funding, which allows networks to grow in unique and responsive ways. The value of building institutional capacity, tailored to each network’s needs, is that networks become more resilient and better able to influence environments, decisions, and key processes, polices and practices that define access of ISPs to health, justice and resources (see Figure 2: Virtuous Cycle of Influencing from Institutional Strengthening and Capacity Building to Movement-building and Positive Change). During the 2016-2107 reporting period, this was best exemplified through: • Building bridges from global messages and guidance down to the grassroots level, assuring that communities on the ground understand and can actively participate in important issues. Grantees accomplished this by conducting trainings on the SWIT (Sex Worker Networks Consortium); developing guidance and tools on institutional gender policies (EKHN); holding dialogues on gender-based violence against women and girls living with HIV (INERELA+); developing a faith-based, stigma-reducing manual for caregivers of PLHIV (IAM); and empowering communities to understand issues related to sustainability, transition, and budget advocacy (Eurasian Regional Consortium). These activities were all made possible through support for staff positions or strategic activity funding, provided by the Robert Carr Fund. • Amplifying voices by listening to and working with communities on the front lines, to ‘connect the dots’ to raise issues that are either emerging or have long been neglected by decision- makers or funders. This occurred through grantee-led research on youth perceptions of emer- ging technologies like PrEP and self-testing (ICW) and building capacity at the community level to assure that transgender people have the tools to participate and advocate at the local level (REDLACTRANS). Grantees also helped to build the core institutional capacity of their member- ship, such as through support for a planning, strategy and governance meeting