Somos – Communication, Health and Sexuality

Contribute to the fight against the human rights violations experienced by the LGBT population incarcerated in prison and police institutions in Brazil.

• Contact prison institutions and human rights bodies.
• Establish a virtual network of supporters, with members of civil society, penitentiary institutions and municipal, state and national government bodies.
• Theoretical-methodological and technical-operative elaboration of the texts that will compose the material; printing and layout and visual elaboration of the material, built from literature review, reports and discussions held by the national virtual network forum and its supporters.
• Visits to prisons previously mapped to get to know the reality the LGBT population in prison and hold focal groups with detainees and workshops with public security workers; filming and audio recording of those who wish to grant interviews for the construction of a national audiovisual campaign.
• Construction of a national audiovisual campaign with research data, testimonies collected during visits to prisons and technical opinions of activists and human rights defenders.
• Update the literature review that discusses the incarceration of LGBT people; mapping of the criminal treatment directed to these people through a theoretical support and the gathering of news published in the media; providing capacity training to the team working with this subject.
• Hold a national seminar on the theme in São Paulo.

The Brazilian LGBT population suffers from violence motivated by gender or sexualities that differ from the heterosexual and cissexist norms. Brazil is the country that kills the most LGBT in the world, particularly the transgender population. Even though the country does not have laws that criminalize homosexuality and Trans sexuality, these people become an easy target of police and of authorities who make use of an underground criminal law. The criminal selectivity that operates in the justice institutions and within the public security system in the country is characterized by taking into account social markers not only of class and race, but also of gender and sexuality.

SOMOS – Communication, Health, and Sexuality is a group originated in Porto Alegre (RS) that carries out Trans disciplinary actions, based on human rights, with emphasis on sexual rights and reproductive rights, based on the articulation of the areas of education, health, communication, and art. Its mission is to work for a plural and democratic society through the affirmation of rights.

SOMOS was founded on December 10, 2001, by militants of the AIDS cause and of the LGBT movement. The idea was to develop a work with an innovative approach directed to communication and health.