The authors provide ten reasons why criminal laws and criminal prosecutions for people transmitting HIV to others are a bad strategy. First, criminalisation is ineffective. Second, what is really needed are measures that really protect those at risk of contracting HIV. Third, criminalisation victimises, oppresses and endangers women. Fourth, criminalisation is often unfairly and selectively enforced. Fifth, criminalisation places blame on one person instead of two. Sixth, these laws are difficult and degrading to apply. Seventh, many of these laws are extremely poorly drafted. Eighth, criminalisation increases stigma. Ninth, criminalisation is a blatant disinducement to testing. And tenth, criminalisation assumes the worst about people with HIV and, in doing so, it punishes vulnerability.
Values, Policies and Rights
More than 40 national, regional and international human rights, gender and HIV organisations convened in Cape Town on 27-28 November to discuss trends, implications and realities of HIV criminalisation. Recent global and regional legislative trends indicate a strong call for criminalisation of HIV transmission as one of the measures in response to the growing HIV and Aids pandemics. Whereas supporters of criminalisation reason that it is the only possible response to halt the HIV pandemic, since ‘reckless’ behaviour needs to be ‘criminalised’, opponents of these legislative changes are united in the view that any form of criminalising the transmission of HIV is a gross human rights violation. Moreover, the criminalisation of HIV transmission will further deter people, particularly from vulnerable and marginalised groups, from using HIV testing services.
Sixty years ago this week, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the first international proclamation of the inherent dignity and equal rights of all people. Yet the Declaration’s enlightened vision of individual freedom, social protection, economic opportunity and duty to community is still unfulfilled. Genocide, torture, domestic violence and discrimination in employment are a daily reality. Above all, poverty is our greatest shame. At least one billion very poor people, 20% of humanity, are daily denied basic rights to adequate food and clean water. As long as gross inequalities between rich and poor persist, it is not possible to claim to be making adequate progress toward fulfilling the ambitions set down 60 years ago. In marking this anniversary, the question raised is how to protect the dignity and equal rights of all.
This publication is a situational assessment, carried out between May and June 2008, of the sexual health and rights of sex workers in Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa, where sex work is illegal. It is based on interviews and focus groups with 87 female, transgender, and male sex workers, as well as 11 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the region that work with sex workers. Sex workers suffer unequal access to health care and social services, lack of access to reproductive health, including HIV prevention and treatment, and discrimination by health workers, police and communities. The report highlights opportunities for NGOs, governments, donors and UN agencies to expand rights-based approaches to sex work that will ultimately improve the health and well-being of sex workers.
The Global Call to Action against Poverty Africa (GCAP Africa) secretariat celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December. In partnership with the Every Human Has Rights campaign (EHHR) – spearheaded by the Elders, like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu – GCAP is calling for true reflection on the universality of these celebrated rights. It is calling on all humanity and even more so those in power to re-look their interactions and perceptions of those that are extremely marginalised and have absolutely no voice. Africans are well aware of the disparity in the application of all documents regarding human rights. The continued exodus of African people toward the West in search of ‘better lives’ is one clear manifestation of dissatisfaction in Africa.
A resolution calling on the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to recognise human rights to access needed medicines was passed at a meeting of African human rights organisations in Abuja, Nigeria. The NGO forum was composed of about 100 human rights organisations in Africa with observer status before the African Commission. The resolution calls on the Commission to recognise access to needed medicines as a fundamental component of the right to health and clarify the state obligations in this regard. It specifically calls on the Commission to fulfil its duty to respect, protect and enforce rights to access to medicines. This includes taking full advantage of all flexibilities in the WTO Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) that promote access to affordable medicines.
In the past six years the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Human Rights Centre have prepared an impressive body of reports offering detailed analyses on elements of the right to health. They have developed a framework for analysis of health-related issues that had so far not been studied from a human rights perspective. A September 2008 symposium reviewed these themes and strategies and made suggestions for further research and implementation. The meeting covered health systems and the right to the highest attainable standard of health, mainstreaming a human rights-based approach to health and the Special Rapporteur’s missions and reports, such as those on community participation and HIV and AIDS.
Human rights provisions addressing technology have been much ignored but are starting to receive renewed interest, mainly regarding patent disputes, stagnation in publicly funded research, and the role of technology in meeting the Millennium Development Goals. This study analyses articles 11.2(a) and 15.1(b) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), as well as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, neither of which assume any conflict between technology and the environment. International cooperation for the realisation of the right to food is widely acknowledged, including technological efforts to produce more high-yielding varieties. Human rights treaties, especially in the ICESCR, can help guide the formulation and implementation of technology policies.
This initiative aims to reduce maternal mortality by holding governments accountable for implementing effective and equitable policies and programmes, securing increased resources at the global and national levels and promoting understanding among, and providing expertise to, key stakeholders on addressing maternal mortality as a human rights issue. It was founded by the AMDD program at Columbia University, CARE, the Center for Reproductive Rights, Family Care International, Physicians for Human Rights, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to the highest attainable standard of health, Paul Hunt. These diverse organisations with different perspectives have joined together to use human rights in the struggle against maternal mortality.
The recently released World Health Report on PHC (WHO Oct 2008) is an attempt to bring PHC again to the forefront of our priorities in global health. But to go beyond well-meaning pronouncements, this will clearly need some internal reorganisation in this UN agency. The question is whether its leadership plans such a re-orientation? PHM does not shy away from a political approach to PHC and is not really fighting its opponents; it is rather bringing the level of the discussion to a higher level. PHM challenges the concept that good health is an imperative for increased economic productivity. Instead, it insists that health is an inalienable human right. Health is not either a technical or a political issue – it is both – and pro-poor health interventions mean nothing if not concomitantly accompanied by poverty reduction actions that are pro-health.