Transgender Youth Capacity Building
·
Capacity building training of the youth council member in facilitation
skills
·
Verbal and Non-verbal awareness messages for the female transgender population
and the global population
·
Police trainings on the rights of transgender in Abbottabad and Haripur
·
Online Covid-19 awareness campaign
Transgender Youth Capacity Building
Capacity building training of the youth council member in facilitation
skills
In
the month of March, 2021, We conducted two different trainings with the
youth council members to build their capacity. The first training was to create
facilitation skill so that the youth council members can conduct the police
training in the city of Abbottabad and Haripur that falls under the province of
Khyber PakhtunKhwa (KPK), Pakistan. The second training was develop general
awareness message through videos and spread them through social media platform.
Police training in Abbottabad
On April 6th, 2021,
We conducted a training with the police of Abbottabad city, Pakistan on the
rights of transgender and Transgender Protection Act 2018. In this training a
total of 15 police officer participated in which 10 were male and 5 were female
participants. Initially the participants were very reluctant and were not
expressing their thoughts regarding the transgender but as the workshop
continues, it broke the barriers of the participants through the content and
then the participants started discussing about the transgender. Initially the
participants had very conservative thinking about transgender community but
after attending the workshop the thinking was changed which is reflecting in
the below graphs:
Police Training in Haripur
On
April 7th, 2021, We conducted the second police training in
Haripur. This training was also to sensitize the police and orient them
regarding the rights of transgenders and The transgender Protection Act 2018. A
total of 14 participants attended the workshop out of which 11 were male and 3
were female. The uniqueness of the workshop was that the transgender community
was also invited by the police to attend the workshop and to give them a
message that the police of Haripur is transgender friendly police and they want
to mainstream the community.
Online Covid-19 Awareness Campaign
Introduction:
As
the number of Covid-19 patients was increasing rapidly in the country.
Human
Right organization immediately took an action against the issue and launched
its online
Covid-19
awareness campaign by using the social media platform. This campaign will
remained for one whole week. The campaign started on Monday May 10, 2021 and
ended on May 16, 2021. The three days of Eid were also included purposely to
reach out to large numbers of individuals who be contacted for the Eid
greetings.
Objective:
The
objective of the campaign was to create awareness in society regarding the
safety measure against Covid-19 and to minimize the spread of the virus. In
addition to this, we want to see a positive change in the behaviour of the
society regarding Covid-19 as the large number of peoples are not believing in
the existence of the Corona Virus.
Methodology:
We used its Whatsapp groups for the dissemination of the awareness messages. The core staff of Youth Council Members, beneficiaries and the stakeholders were reached out through WhatsApp. The group admin circulated the awareness pictures to all members of the group/s on daily basis and the members of the group/s use that picture as the Display Picture (DP) for their social media accounts
Outcome:
Through
this campaign, we reached out to approximately (Number of Individuals
reached) peoples and disseminated the awareness messages. Lots of people
appreciated the effort of us in a very positive manner. Transgender
community liked the online campaign of us and said that they will follow
the SOPs that the Government of Pakistan has made regarding Covid-19. The
successful experience of online campaign boosted the confidence of us and
motivated it to launch more productive online campaigns for its beneficiaries
in the future.
Partnership Development
From the very onset of this grant period,
unfortunately the entire world was already facing the challenge of COVID-19.
Very limited human interactions, partial or total lockdowns in addition to
nervousness within the government institutions made it almost impossible for
us to initiate a dialogue and sensitize the secretariat of Federal
Ombudsman (it was planned for this year to develop a transgender friendly
environment at Federal Ombudsman so that the transgender population could
easily access the above forum). Although, currently the commissioner for
transgender rights seats herself as Federal Ombudsman but unfortunately, beyond
political rhetoric, there is very little interaction with the transgender
populations and almost close to none complaint filed at the secretariat by any
transgender.
However, the order issued by the Provincial
Ombudsman in favour of us and transgender community was remarkable moment
to cherish. This is one of the opportunities to build future partnership with
the government departments such as police, civil defence and other law implementing
bodies. Though, it was verbally communicated to us at Ombudsman during the
hearing that we should conduct further trainings of the law implementing
bodies on the Transgender Protection Act 2018 to ensure harmony and fill the
gaps between the two stakeholders however, surprisingly, it was not made part
of the written order.
Challenges/lessons learned
Describe
any problems or challenges in implementing your program objectives. These could
be internal as well as external pertaining to your situation
(laws/culture/crackdowns etc.), as well as any unforeseen obstacles that
emerged and seriously impeded your work.
External challenges:
1. The gradual increase of the
COVID-19 virus also known as the second strain of COVID-19 in Pakistan creating
an unsafe situation for the organization staff and project target participants
to move/travel and/or conduct on-site activities.
2. The community indifferent
behaviour towards practicing of COVID-19 SOPs jeopardizes their own safety as
well as the project staff reaching out to them in emergency
3. The Ehsas Program introduce by
the Prime Minister to provide financial assistance to under-served communities
and people living below poverty line did have a quota for transgender population but for that only
those transgenders qualified who had the CNIC of a transgender. In addition to
this, due to closure of business and limited mobility of larger populations;
the transgender population could not pursue one of its most common sources of
earning i.e. beggary. The COVID-19 also limited the functions which again
deeply affected the economic stability of transgender house-holds. Thus,
resources were limited and the community at time did have the money to interact
with each other over the phone, leave alone getting in touch with the outreach
teams.
4. Community incapacity to
effectively use the online mediums for the purposes of engagement with team/s
and other relevant platforms to raise their voices
5. Lack of awareness among the
community regarding COVID-19 leading to the behavioural state where their assumptions
puts them in unsafe daily interactions
6. Frequent Tele-signals jam during
political instability causing delays in activities-this happened during Molana
Khadim Rizvi’s arrival to Islamabad with a procession. However, the activity
was conducted in Murree that is relatively a safer space.
Internal challenges:
There were no significant internal challenges that
caused delays in work flow.
Proposed activities for next quarter
For
each of the program objective, please describe the planned activities. If you
think that some activities may not be completed within the proposed timeline
because of the challenges then please describe how you will address/adapt the
project.
1.
Printing of materials e.g. masks, T-shirts etc. We invited the
quotations from different businesses who print such materials. For right now,
it still has not been able to find somebody who fits into the allocated budget.
However, that does not mean that the said products will not be produced, it may
just take a little more time to finalize in affordable deal.
2.
Future planning of projects and collaborations. This is currently happening.
Our entire team is in Lahore with the hope to find some connections within
the Punjab government to further its outreach in the entire Multan district and
onwards in Southern Punjab.
3.
Assessment and Evaluation of the YC members. Originally this was
planned through an extensive plan of action, which included a focused group
discussion with the beneficiaries of the sessions conducted by different YC
members in two and a half years. In addition to this, the multiplication of an
outreach of the messages was to be measured through in-depth interviews in the
community. Also questionnaire was developed to assess the learning graph of
each YC member. However, due to the second surge of COVID-19, most of the
assessment had to be trimmed down. The only few things that are selected where
minimal human contact will happen are the one-on-one interviews of the YC
members and random one or two interviews of the beneficiaries from each
neighbourhood that is been touched upon by the YC members in their outreach. This
will be done in a safe hotel environment with strict COVID-19 SOPs in place.
Additional information
This is the
most recent case of discrimination against the transgender population. The
incident happened in one of the most visited tourist-resort town, Murree,
Pakistan. These transgenders were participating in a capacity-building workshop
hosted by us in Murree in October 2020. Some of them during a stroll in the
evening were stopped by the personnel from the local law regulating body and
were asked if they had registered themselves with the Civil Defense office in
Murree. This permission was for the transgender population to enter and stay in
Murree. Upon the negative response from female transgenders, the Civil Defense
official insisted that the female transgender should immediately come to the
Civil Defense office and give their names and national identity card numbers
along with their cell phones numbers and photographs.
Team who was close by saw the female transgender being surrounded by a group of
people and went over to check the reason. Once they reached the group and
discovered the situation they tried to intervene. They assured the civil
defense personnel that they provide all needed guarantees regarding the
transgenders' presence in Murree, however would not let the official take any
photographs of the participants of the workshop. When the team went back to the
workshop location, they shared the situation.
The next
morning, Mr. Kashif along with one of the board members and a couple of
workshop participants went back to the Civil Defense office to express his
concerns and complaint about the discriminatory treatment of transgenders. The
official informed Mr. Kashif that they took this action upon the order of the
Assistant Commissioner (AC) of Murree. According to the official, the AC had
issued the order because the trader group and the resident of Murree had
complained that the presence of the female transgender population leads to
nuisance- spreading of immorality as well as misleading the youth.
On Mr. Kashif insistence, the civil Defense officer handed back the document to him
that had the details of the participants. Mr. Kashif reminded that the action
taken by the Civil Defense on October 9th, 2020 is discrimination
and injustice under the Transgender Protection Act 2018 and that we will
raise the issue and express its concerns at the appropriate forum.
On November
15, 2020, We filed the complaint against the
Assistant Commissioner and Civil Defense department of Murree at the Provincial
Ombudsman. In the complaint, he reported the incident and requested that the
Constitution of Pakistan as well as the Transgender Protection Act 2018 be used
as the guiding principles for ending discrimination against transgender
populations.
Finally, on
December 8th, 2020, a detailed order was issued by the Provincial
Ombudsman office. The order clearly described that the transgender population
holds the right to access public places and their mobility is protected under
Section 4(E & F). Therefore, nobody has a right to stop them from accessing
public places or imposing any conditions on their free movement. The Provincial
Ombudsman, further ordered the Assistant commissioner of Murree, to instruct
the Civil Defense officers to safeguard the rights of the transgender
population, and, provide them protection wherever and whenever needed.
We work
is for the larger female transgender populations of the country and the effort
is always to find a sustainable and long-term solution to any or all problems
that female transgender populations may face. We thought that this was a moment
that is captured in the history of the evolution of the Transgender Protection
Act 2018 and should be shared with all partners and friends.
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