Circus monkeys or change agents? Civil society advocacy for HIV/AIDS in adverse policy environments

This paper explores the factors enabling and undermining civil society efforts to advocate for policy reforms relating to HIV/AIDS and illicit drugs in three countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia: Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine. It examines how political contexts and civil society actors’ strengths and weaknesses inhibit or enable advocacy for policy change – issues that are not well understood in relation to specific policy areas such as HIV/AIDS, or particular regions of the world where national policies are believed to be major drivers of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The study is based on in-depth interviews with representatives of civil society organizations (CSOs) (n = 49) and national level informants including government and development partners (n = 22). Our policy analysis identified a culture of fear derived from concerns for personal safety but also risk of losing donor largesse. Relations between CSOs and government were often acrimonious rather than synergistic, and while we found some evidence of CSO collective action, competition for external funding – in particular for HIV/AIDS grants from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was often divisive. Development partners and government tend to construct CSOs as service providers rather than advocates. While some advocacy was tolerated by governments, CSO participation in the policy process was, ultimately, perceived to be tokenistic. This was because there are financial interests in maintaining prohibitionist legislation: efforts to change punitive laws directed at the behaviors of minority groups such as injecting drug users have had limited impact.

► Civil society organizations (CSOs) have struggled to advocate on HIV/AIDS and drugs policy in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan.
► Adverse policy environments including weak governance and political instability have impeded CSO advocacy efforts.
► Advocacy on HIV/AIDS and drug policy has been tolerated by country governments but was ultimately tokenistic.
► Financial dependency has subdued the ability of CSOs to challenge government policies on contentious issues.