HEALTH: Activists to Push for Human Rights of HIV/AIDS Patients

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

MEXICO CITY, Jul 9 2000 (IPS) - AIDS activists get another opportunity to champion the cause of human rights for those living with the killer d isease at this week’s 13th International AIDS Conference, in Durban, South Af rica.

Of particular importance to these advocates is the need to secure gre ater community support from all countries for the rights of adults and chi ldren afflicted with the killer disease.

And to achieve such guarantees, the conference organisers have schedu led a special session on the subject, one in a series of “community program mes” that will run concurrent with the scientific sessions at the international gathering, which is expected to draw close to 12,000 people from acro ss the world.

According to Peter Busse, the Community Programme co-chairperson, the community programmes will seek to “integrate and involve the infected and affec ted community perspectives and voices into all aspects of the conference programme.”

The special community programme on human rights for HIV-AIDS patients , in fact, has already identified five Latin American countries, including Argen tina, Brazil and Venezuela, to showcase their achievements – studies done l ocally to identify human rights issues that matter to patients with HIV-AIDS (h uman immunodeficiency virus- acquired immune deficiency syndrome).

Such studies are a “qualified success,” say the organisers of the AID S conference, since they offer ample information to those who are not f amiliar with a particular country’s situation, and they identify human rights issues related to HIV-AIDS that need to be addressed.

Some legal experts and AIDS activists, however, opted for other avenu es to achieve their objective. Two days before the conference began on Sund ay, the Canadian HIV-AIDS Legal Network and the South African AIDS Law Projec t teemed up with the United Nations department for AIDS (UNAIDS) to launch a pre-conference meeting in Durban on the legal, ethical and human righ ts aspects of the pandemic.

“In the area of HIV-AIDS, there are several areas of rights that coul d potentially be used to mobilise people, groups and communities,” obse rved Cathi Albertyn, in a discussion paper written for this pre-conference event , “Putting Third First – Critical Legal Issues and HIV-AIDS.”

In her view, a rights campaign requires one to frame the issues caref ully, drawing on broad-based support, a range of legal and non-legal strate gies and sufficient resources.

And that calls for using rights that are already entrenched in the la w. “Where rights are entrenched in national laws, they can serve both as cataly st for change and a defensive strategy against constraints that states or it s citizens seek to impose on persons or groups,” added Albertyn, of the Centre f or Applied Legal Studies at the Univervsity of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Sout h Africa.

Furthermore, she referred to the range of “first generation rights” – like equality, dignity, privacy and security of the person – that could be drawn upon to secure the rights of HIV-AIDS patients.

According to the Canadian legal body, people afflicted with HIV-AIDS have become victims of two epidemics – the disease and the “one of stigma and discrimination.” As a result, such discrimination affects the lives o f both the victims of the disease and their lovers, families and caregivers.

This epidemic of stigma has consequences, it pointed out, since infec ted people have been prevented from seeking or obtaining the health care and soc ial support they require, adults with the disease have lost their jobs or have been denied employment, and afflicted children have been denied care.

In Canada, for instance, “cases of discrimination have been documente d in many areas, including housing, employment, prisons, access to health care and access to public services,” it revealed.

The need to stem such pervasive discrimination has become more urgent in light of the bleak picture painted by UNAIDS in its “Report on the Global H IV-AIDS Epidemic,” which was released in late June.

“The probability of dying of AIDS is systematically higher than the p revalence rates indicate,” the report declared of the disease that has, to date , been responsible for 18.8 million deaths, 3.8 million of them children.

In sub-Saharan Africa, where the most severe epidemic is to be found, close to 24.5 million adults and children are now living with HIV, and the proportion of 15- to 49-year-olds infected with the virus is still increasing, the report added.

What is more, it noted, in countries such as Cameroon, Ghana and Sout h Africa – which now has 4.2 million people living with HIV-AIDS, “the highest n umber in the world” – the adult prevalence rate “has shot up by more than half in the past two years.”

Regards the impact of the disease among African women, it said this: “HIV prevalence rates in young women aged 15-24 are higher – typically two or three times higher – than those of young men the same age.”

Speaking soon after this report’s release, Peter Piot, the executive director of UNAIDS, expressed his disappointment at the global response to suc h a dismal reality, describing it as “just a fraction of what it could be.”

“We need to respond to this crisis on a massively different scale fro m what has been done so far,” he said.

Securing the rights of HIV-AIDS patients, in fact, is one area that U NAIDS still deems wanting, despite the “International Guidelines on HIV-AID S and Human Rights” it has published in tandem with the UN High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCHR).

This publication, which focuses on 12 aspects of HIV-AIDS and human r ights, specifically calls on governments and communities to “confront the is sues with a sense of urgency.”

It emphasises, furthermore, that the fulfilment of a state’s obligati on to non-discrimination, health, information, education, social welfare an d public participation is “crucial not only to ensure human care and support f or those infected and affected by HIV-AIDS, (but) it is also vital in the figh t to reduce people’s vulnerability to infection”.

According to UNAIDS, the need to push through this message – that hum an rights and public health are inextricably linked – will be on the agenda of its team of top officials during the Durban gathering.