Fighting stigma is important!

Today, different groups of people are becoming victims of stigma and discrimination on a daily basis, and the way to save them is in our hands! Discrimination as a restriction or violation of human rights on the basis of social, racial, national, sexual, political, religious, or other character often occurs before us, but it may be difficult to identify.

The REAct team in Georgia is launching a social campaign #FightStigma to tackle the existing problems and raise awareness, which includes raising awareness of the problems of vulnerable groups, making videos to raise awareness among groups, preparing articles, media engagement, and many other activities that contribute to this group. In the process of fighting.

Within the framework of the GHRN social campaign, there were shared life stories, facts, statistics about the situation in Georgia today, what challenges do people from vulnerable groups face with and what we can do with that!

On June 26, on the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, GHRN held a webinar “Change begins with you – stigma/discrimination against drug users”. The webinar preparation process was coordinated by the Social Campaign Coordinator, Georgia REAct Coordinator, and Media Communications Manager with active engagements of community representatives.

The webinar covered the following main topics:

• Historical context, how HIV prevention started. Presentation of the study results – stigma towards PWID among medical staff;
• Legal understanding of stigma/discrimination;
• The role of stigma/discrimination on working with PWID, stigma/discrimination and NSP programs; (4) Case studies: Self-stigma and assessment of the current situation;
• Stigma against female PWID – double stigma.

At the end of the webinar, a video produced in collaboration with GENPUD production where community members talk about their challenges on stigma/discrimination was presented.

The webinar recording can be found here: