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The biggest issue that I have is how to engage with to engage with Government Officials on issues that are against the laws of the Country. These are issue that criminalize MSM. How do you ensure that you do your work without getting into conflict with the law. Furthermore, how do you engage with religious leaders who in most cases are against such issues? How do you make them understand the need to protect participants from such background given certain barriers from various stakeholders?
Though we have not been involved in the actual implementation of research trials, one thing that has not come out is how this trust is built especially when it is your first time to work in a particular community. In most research studies that have taken place in Zambia, the complaints from the community members is the use of Community Advisory board members that do not reside in the location where the research is taking place. There are instances where the protocol clearly states the involvement of people living in the community where the research is taking place. However, this is ignored and the research team engages people living outside the research site.
This is indeed a complex scenario. The fact that MSM is illegal makes it very difficult even to conduct the research. Now that this research has been given a go ahead there is need to look at who are influential in the site were the research is going to take place. After identifying these people it will be good to use them to mitigate some of the anticipated risks that the trial participants may face. This is not an easy one but definitely some solution should be found to ensure that participants are as much as possible protected.
The issue of law and ethical procedures is indeed a very exciting scenario. In most cases this is the situation where most of the researchers and community engagers find themselves. We are caught in the conflict of law with ethical procedures. In most cases, any research is supposed to respect the law of the land. In the Thai situation, the issue of needle exchange is perceived to be illegal. And that’s it. There is need for advocates to push for legislation of laws that are not in conflict with certain practices in society. In Zambia, we have been facing this same problem is terms of conducting research on MSM. Any mention of statistics on MSM is perceived to be illegal. How then do we reconcile law and ethical standards?
The biggest problem that I see is that in most cases the engagement is top bottom. The researchers tend to dominate the whole process thereby giving little attention to the inputs from the CAB members. The CAB members are in most cases at the receiving end.
I believe that Formative research is a component of community engagement. It a process that which draws a road map for community engagement. In the absence of formative research, it will be very difficult for research to have a meaningful community engagement. Therefore, I feel that formative research is foundation for a meaningful community engagement.
I totally agree with you colleagues. These are some of the unforeseen issues that can arise in any project. It is always important top be prepared to face such unplanned events that may affect your research. If in the initial design of the research you had taken into account negative unforeseen events, then you will have a back up plan to address such issues. Life is not always straight forward and such obstacles are expected in any normal life of a persons project or research.
I feel that this is not done openly. However, there is a general feeling that it is on the increase due to high levels of unemployment. The problem is not lack of skills. Therefore the issue of capacity building is not the biggest problem. I feel that the problem is to do with un equal opportunities in terms of Finance and employment. Whether these youths are capacity built in various skills, are they going to compete favorably in the economy? The economic landscape in most of African countries is not support to upcoming entrepreneurs. That is the more reason that these youths get frustrated and resort to drug abuse in order for them to forget the situation in which they find themselves in.
In Zambia, cases of gender based violence are reported to the Victim support Unit. The Victim support Unit is a unit within the Police service that handles issues of such nature. However, if the case involves some sort of physical harm, there is need for the victim to obtain a medical report that can be used in the courts of law should the case be referred to court. However, due to the fact that most victims of gender based violence are economically poor, most of the cases are never reported to the police.
I feel that there is something that is missing in this discussion. It is like each and every person on this platform has a different definition of a stakeholder. It will be great to first of all understand what we mean by this term. reading through these responses makes me feel that some feel that the media are not part of the stakeholders. Then who makes up the group of stakeholders?
The biggest problem that is there is that researchers at times have a problem to trust people outside the research team. There is always an issue of suspicion. They feel that you are there to destroy the good work that they are doing. This makes them to be defensive and not open up to other stakeholders.
