The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 25, states that everyone has the right to health and medical care. Yet, research around the world has shown that for people of diverse sexual orientation and gender identity – SOGIE, also known as LGBT- equal access to health care that meets their special needs is often sorely lacking
Key issues include:
1 – Bias and discrimination against SOGIE-diverse people on the part of health providers
2 – Lack of awareness, training and technical competence on the part of health care providers
3 – Lack of inclusion of LGBT in integrated health care
4 – data collection, and institutional
policies
5 – Lack of standards and measures to ensure accountability of health care providers and
government
In Vanuatu and the Pacific region, there are very few resources to address SOGIE inequities in health care. Research is very limited in this area, there are no resources to guide health providers in developing specialized knowledge, policies and skills for SOGIE inclusive health care, and there also no measures available to assess existing health care services on SOGIE inclusiveness. Even though Vanuatu is a signatory to many of the international human rights and health conventions, there are little to no accountability mechanisms in place.
To address these issues, VPride, the only SOGIE support and rights advocacy organization in Vanuatu requested and obtained the valuable support of the Spotlight Initiative-for a social accountability project with the following outcomes, presented in this report:
1. Review of the Right to Health, including international and national legal frameworks
and key aspects of the right to health, as they apply to SOGIE inclusive health care
2. Research on SOGIE health issues, standards and best practices
3. Outcomes of the social accountability project, includingo A discussion of social accountability and a description of the approach used
o An operational definition of SOGIE inclusive health care in Vanuatu
o Three accountability tools:
a. A set of Vanuatu standards and measures to operationalize and to assess
SOGIE inclusive health care, aligned with the UNDP LGBT Inclusion Index and
international best practices
b. A Provider Self-Rating Form
c. A Patient Care Feedback form
o An overview of training sessions and educational resources developed to promote
and support awareness and social, cultural and technical competencies for SOGIE
inclusive health care
This project supports the fulfillment of VPride’s strategic goal #3 Health, which is “to support
inclusive and improved SOGIE healthcare services in Vanuatu and to advocate for SOGIE
inclusion in health policy”6.
The project is also aligned with other key frameworks, especially the UNDP LGBT Inclusion
Index and the Sustainable Development Goals, both in their international and in the Vanuatu
national formulation.
VPride is grateful for the financial support provided for this project through the Spotlight
Initiative, and for the technical support provided by Human Capacity Development
International (HCDI7) in Vanuatu. We are also grateful to Oxfam for its ongoing partnership
support to VPride.