Charting new territory: community participation at the centre of global policy making: Table 1

In principle, the global development discourse increasingly views people as ‘agents of change’ rather than ‘recipients of services’. In practice, however, people's participation has been limited to project implementation and has been pursued without building people's critical consciousness about their problems, and the means of solving them. This becomes particularly relevant for marginalized communities, such as sex workers and sexual minorities in India, who face further problems of discrimination and widespread stigma. Although global policy-making spaces have sought participation to ensure representation, there seems to be a strong tendency among dominant stakeholders to maintain systems and processes that legitimize and perpetuate the exclusion of marginalized groups. This article explores how these communities have seized opportunities offered by an HIV prevention programme and a global, post-2015 participatory research process to move from addressing symptoms of their problems towards tackling root causes, while using contextual knowledge to influence global policy making. When given an opportunity, community members have demonstrated the ability to deliberate, negotiate and advocate for their own agenda in meaningful ways and to challenge beliefs held by policy makers. This article makes the case for a shift in development practice and research, such that it provides people living on the margins the space and opportunity to analyse their own situations and consider alternatives.