RIGHTS-CAMBODIA: Law Gives Women Tool against HIV/AIDS

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jun 27 2002 (IPS) - By passing Cambodia’s first HIV/AIDS-specific law, the country’s lawmakers seek to give women another instrument to fight the pandemic, and the unequal gender relationships that make them more vulnerable to it.

The law was approved this month by the national legislature in an attempt to respond to the pace at which HIV is sweeping through this South-east Asian nation.

Women infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, now have a legal tool in their hands when they are discriminated against or stigmatised, says Tony Lisle, head of the South-east Asia office of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

“It is a landmark legislation, because the rights of HIV-positive people are enshrined in the law,” he adds. “The law provides a platform for these people to make their case against discrimination.”

Vulnerable women, including wives, have much to gain from the new law, which is severe on anyone who, while aware of having HIV, transmits it to others. Such transmission is deemed a crime and violators will have to face legal penalties.

In Cambodia, HIV transmission is largely through heterosexual activities, as in most of South-east Asia. While HIV/AIDS was first detected in the country in 1991, it was initially concentrated among female sex workers but in recent years has been spreading across all segments of the population.

Among those fuelling this spread are husbands who visit sex workers. In fact, some surveys show that as much as 70 percent of the men surveyed about visits to brothels admit that they do so.

Female Cambodian lawmakers drew attention to this reality during the debates before the approval of the new law. One legislator, Ho Non, was quoted in the media as having said that “men must change their behaviour.”

Currently, there are close to 220,000 adults and children with HIV/AIDS in Cambodia, states UNAIDS. The death toll due to the disease is estimated at 80,000.

Of the estimated 210,000 adults hit by the pandemic, one in three are women between the ages of 15 to 49. The highest prevalence rate in this country of 11.5 million people is among female sex workers — over 40 percent, adds UNAIDS.

Cambodia’s passage of its HIV/AIDS law makes it the second country in South-east Asia to pursue such a response to the pandemic, which has the potential of destroying a country that has already been devastated by decades of war and the oppressive regime of the genocidal Khmer Rouge.

The first to push ahead with using the law to provide as a remedy in HIV/AIDS was the Philippines, through its 1998 Philippine AIDS Prevention and Control Act.

“It is very important for women –whether they have the disease or not — to have such law that mandates HIV/AIDS education in both public and private schools because education is the first level in addressing the problem,” says Maria Victoria Balleza of Isis International-Manila, a women’s rights advocacy group.

Equally significant, according to Balleza, are the legal clauses to prevent discrimination against HIV/AIDS sufferers. It stipulates that “compulsory HIV testing as a precondition to employment, admission to schools, entry or continued stay in the country, provision of medical or any kind of service is unlawful.”

Moreover, vulnerable Filipino women are guaranteed anonymous HIV testing by the department of health, she explains, which is “a big help to women who are at risk of contracting the disease”.

The Philippines ranks among the South-east Asian countries with low HIV prevalence rates. It has 28,000 people reported with HIV/AIDS out of a 75 million population. But here, too, the mode of transmission is through heterosexual activity and of the 26,000 infected adults, 11,000 are women.

But Thailand has shown that there are other options to achieve similar goals — strong national policies on HIV/AIDS, rather than specific laws.

Thailand’s 1997 ‘National Plan for the Prevention and Control of HIV/AIDS, for instance, is very much in keeping with the spirit of the rights and protections offered by other laws on HIV/AIDS in the region.

The plan aims to empower individuals, families and communities to be resistant to HIV. “It seeks to counter discrimination and combat stigma and it evolved with tremendous public participation,” says Vitit Muntarbhorn, a legal and human rights expert at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.

“The Thai policy is also clear on prevention and protection, like condom use, education and health services,” he adds. “It enables women to feel empowered after years of being marginalised.”

This policy, in fact, has been responsible for containing HIV/AIDS, after years of denial. Thailand has been among the worst affected in the region, but in recent years aggressive condom-use and anti-HIV/AIDS programmes have reduced the number of new cases each year.

There are over 755,000 people with HIV/AIDS in Thailand out of a population of 62 million people, states UNAIDS, though others put the figure at about 1 million. The disease has killed over 300,000 Thais since it was first detected in the early 1980s.

Some 80 percent of HIV/AIDS cases involved heterosexual transmission, and of the 740,000 adults that UNAIDS says are living with HIV/AIDS, 305,000 are women.

According to Vitit, Thailand’s “soft law approach” — pursuing a strong policy without the effect and penalties that the laws in the Philippines and Cambodia provide, does not reflect an inadequacy.

“A hard law like in Cambodia will enable people to go to court, this is one value-added. But Thais can pursue the same option since they have rights guaranteed in the Constitution,” he explains. “It is not an either or situation.”

UNAIDS’ Lisle agrees: “What matters is for people with HIV to have rights that are protected and that they can be equals in society. For women with HIV/AIDS, it means having access to health care, antiretroviral (drugs), and not being stigmatised.”