Crucial work furthering LGBTQ+ rights and preventing HIV in the Pacific Islands has been disrupted by US President Donald Trump’s freeze of foreign aid and may not recover, advocates in the region have said.
Despite being the world’s most aid-dependent region, the Asia-Pacific received just 5 per cent of global LGBTQ+ funding between 2021 and 2022, while being home to 55 per cent of the world’s population, according to the latest Global Resources Report.
Funds from the US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) and the Agency for International Development (USAID) support law reform, community spaces, data collection, and improving access to healthcare.
Trump’s January decision to freeze most US foreign aid until April 20 could significantly stunt rights progress in the region, which is socially conservative and predominantly Christian, advocates said.
“Our states (have) perpetual ancient perspectives because of culture and church,” said Ratu Eroni Ledua Dina, who founded the Trans Affirmative Action Guild (TAAG).
“When support from the global community goes missing, it means we go back into lifestyles where our people get more openly killed or harassed on the streets,” she told Context from Fiji.
Colonial-era sodomy laws, criminalising same-sex activity, still exist in Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Tuvalu, although they are rarely enforced.
ILGA Oceania, the Pacific branch of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), runs a decriminalisation project seeking to challenge such laws and their influence.
The organisation has paused the project and the Fiji project officer was let go as a result of the freeze.
“It is highly likely that we will not be able to proceed with the project beyond the initial 90-day suspension period,” said Margherita Coppolino, co-chair of ILGA Oceania, from Melbourne.
“Losing momentum now would be a huge setback for LGBTQ+ rights.”
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We’ve been able to control the spreading of HIV and STIs for a very long time now because of those funds. If we don’t have that, we’re going to go back to being stigmatised and blamed for this disease.
Joey Joleen Mataele, co-founder, Tonga Leitis Association
Multiple aid cuts
The DRL initiated an open competition for up to US$2 million in funding for grassroots LGBTQ+ organisations in January 2024, but it is not clear what will happen to that funding stream now.
A US State Department spokesperson has said that all aid programmes have undergone a review and those that do not serve US interests will not continue.
APCOM, one of two major NGOs that work with the LGBTQ+ community in the region and rely on US funding, called for alternative emergency funding to mitigate the impact on essential services and community-led operations.
The Netherlands, the largest funder of LGBTQ+ rights worldwide, also plans to cut overseas development aid by more than two-thirds over the next three years. The country is the fourth biggest funder of the Asia-Pacific region.
Australia and New Zealand are expected to pick up some of the shortfall, but in 2022 both nations had significantly less money allocated for developmental aid than the United States, let alone for LGBTQ+ rights, according to the Global Philanthropy Report.
Rising HIV infections
Trump’s aid freeze comes at a time when HIV infections are rising in the Pacific, with Fiji declaring an outbreak in January.
While Papua New Guinea is the only Pacific nation to directly benefit from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), many LGBTQ+ organisations working to prevent HIV in the region receive US funding.
The US government issued a waiver for life-saving HIV care and treatment, but this does not benefit all vulnerable LGBTQ+ communities, with only pregnant or breast-feeding women allowed to receive preventative PrEP drugs, for example.
The freeze has had a knock-on impact with multiple NGOs having to pause their work, said Eamonn Murphy, director of UNAIDS regional support teams for the Asia-Pacific region.
“(US) investment in this region, budget-wise, wasn’t to the same order of magnitude as other high burden epidemics in other parts of the world, but it was so strategic. They were highly targeted and effective,” Murphy said from Bangkok.
The LGBTQ+ community in Tonga has not recorded an HIV case since 2015, but could see fresh cases if community-led organisations lose funding, said Joey Joleen Mataele, co-founder of Tonga Leitis Association, which receives money from the Global Fund and Outright International.
“We’ve been able to control the spreading of HIV and STIs for a very long time now because of those funds,” Mataele said.
“If we don’t have that, we’re going to go back to being stigmatised and blamed for this disease.”
‘We’re invisible’
The US funding freeze has also put community-led data collection and research in jeopardy, advocates said.
Given how remote the South Pacific region is, there is already a lack of data on Indigenous gender-diverse identities in the area.
These include Māhūs, who embody both male and female spirit, and fa’afafine; a person who is assigned male at birth, but identifies as a third gender.
“The absence of data invisibilises our existence. We’re basically non-existent,” said Ratu Eroni, who is also a co-chair of ILGA Oceania.
“Concerns about our socioeconomic status - being unable to find employment, sustain a living, healthcare - they’re hard for governments to actually rationalise and support if there isn’t data that exists in the first place to make sense of it.”
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