Dahn Pak, Labrys, Kyrgyzstan

Background  First (and last for the moment) training for future police officers in national academy of police in 2009  About 15 participants  2 days

Main challenge and solution  Impossible to conduct a training without approval of higher ranking officers, who are also impossible to get to without any connections.  Use any connections you have to organize at least something – in case of Labrys it was a training in the police academy

The seminar  1 st day – very stressful for the trainers, who had to deal with extreme homophobia and transphobia of the participants  Subjects discussed: Who are LGBT (terminology) What is homosexuality/transsexuality What problems do they meet in society?

The seminar (continued)  2 nd day - human rights day  Subjects discussed: International human rights conventions Universal Declaration of the UN National laws and constitution of Kyrgyzstan - all of that concerning LGBT rights

Lessons learned  Police are not homophobic and transphobic because they just want to be like that – you need to raise awareness  From participants we learned that if there is no explicit protection of LGBT in national laws, the police think they do not have to protect LGBT rights

Critique  Trainers were a-priori negative towards the training, results and participants – it is better not to have such opinions and attitudes beforehand  Two opposing sides in the training – the trainers and the participants. This should not happen – instead, we must always remind them that we have one goal.