AIDS activists in Zimbabwe have launched a major drive to ensure that the rights of people living with HIV are enshrined in the new constitution. The Global Political Agreement signed in September 2008 between Zimbabwe's various political rivals, which gave rise to the coalition government in February 2009, includes writing the new constitution expected to be introduced in 2010. ‘We are not calling for a token participation, but significant and meaningful involvement that will go a long way in promoting our welfare and rights when the constitution is adopted,’ Tonderai Chiduku, advocacy coordinator of Zimbabwe National Network of People Living with HIV and AIDS (ZNNP+) said. The Southern Africa AIDS Information Dissemination Service (SAFAIDS) and ZNNP+ are calling for a bill of rights that would promote better access to health services. An estimated two million people are living with HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe, one of the countries hardest hit by HIV and AIDS, but have never before been actively involved in such legislation and do not have representation in parliament, Chiduku said. The activists have also urged policy-makers to include a clause that would commit the government to spending a minimum of 10–15% of the national budget on healthcare.
Values, Policies and Rights
This paper reports on an interview with Professor Savitri Goonesekere, an international expert on the rights of women and children and a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women between 1999 and 2002. In the interview she notes ‘a cynicism about rights and what they can do, especially in developing countries. This just encourages states not to implement the treaties they have signed'. She notes that human rights laws create a culture of support for implementing health policies by helping the community to monitor the state’s actions and programmes. She notes that some argue that if health policies are in place, health rights do not need to be put in the constitution and other laws. However she suggests that political systems are very fragile and a change in a health minister can bring in someone with a different attitude, leading everything to change. 'If a right is not in place in a law or constitution, it’s very easy to pull it back.’
In the context of South Africa's intense preparation for hosting the 2010 FIFA World Cup, anxiety over HIV transmission in the context of sex work has sparked debate on the most appropriate legal response to this industry. Drawing on existing literature, the authors highlight the increased vulnerability of sex workers in the context of the HIV pandemic in southern Africa. They argue that laws that criminalise sex work not only compound sex workers' individual risk for HIV, but also compromise broader public health goals. International sporting events are thought to increase demand for paid sex and, particularly in countries with hyper-endemic HIV such as South Africa, likely to foster increased HIV transmission through unprotected sex. The 2010 FIFA World Cup presents a strategic opportunity for South Africa to respond to the challenges that the sex industry poses in a strategic and rights-based manner. Public health goals and growing evidence on HIV prevention suggest that sex work is best approached in a context where it is decriminalised and where sex workers are empowered. In short, the authors argue for a moratorium on the enforcement of laws that persecute and victimise sex workers during the World Cup period.
In late 2009 the South African government announced that it had approved a new HIV and AIDS policy in the South African National Defence Force (SANDF). This was widely welcomed by AIDS and human rights lobbyists. A November 2009 statement by the SANDF noted that the new policy made provision for the recruitment and selective deployment of HIV-positive members of the military. The new policy complies with a High Court ruling in May 2008, which found that the previous policy of excluding HIV-positive people from recruitment and foreign deployment was unconstitutional. The new policy draws on a system of classifying soldiers according to their health status and needs. An HIV-positive soldier who is stable and asymptomatic can now be classified as a ‘G2K1’, meaning they have a chronic but treatable disease and can be deployed ‘anywhere at any time’. An HIV-positive recruit is required to be on ante-retrovirals for three to six months before being considered for deployment, and failure to adhere to treatment is grounds for being declared ‘temporarily unfit for deployment and military courses’.
This 20th annual World Report summarises human rights conditions in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide, based on investigative work in 2009 by Human Rights Watch (HRW) staff in partnership with human rights activists in the country in question. HRW notes that attacking human rights defenders, organisations, and institutions aims to silence the messenger, to deflect pressure and to lessen the cost of committing human rights violations. In the report, HRW calls on government supporters of human rights to defend the defenders by identifying and countering these attacks. The report also points out that defense of human rights, including health rights, depends on the vitality of the human rights movement.
Despite the increased efforts of the international community, including civil society, in promoting sound, equitable, humane and lawful conditions of migration, migrants continue being exposed to commoditisation and human rights violations. Building on recommendations by the Committee on Migrant Workers, December 18 strongly recommends that all states implement gender-sensitive legislation that extends the protections of international labour standards to migrant workers. It also calls on Governments to curb abuses of recruitment agencies, enhance legal channels for migration and open up judicial mechanisms to victims of abuse, regardless of their immigration status. The situation of migrant children also remains a particular concern, especially those who are unaccompanied and at risk of being smuggled or trafficked. All migrants are protected by human rights and labour standards, including the International Convention for the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, regardless of immigration status. Migrant children—whether accompanied or not and whatever their migratory status—are equally entitled to all the rights under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. December 18 urges all states to ratify and implement the International Convention for the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2010.
More than two-thirds of African countries have laws criminalising homosexual acts and, despite accounting for a significant percentage of new infections in many countries, men who have sex with men tend to be left out of the HIV response. '[They] are going underground; they are hiding themselves and continuing to fuel the epidemic,' said UNAIDS executive director, Michél Sidibé. 'We need to make sure these vulnerable groups have the same rights everyone enjoys: access to information, care and prevention for them and their families.' Human rights violations against gays include a number of countries in east, southern and central Africa, such as Malawi, Uganda – which recently tabled the Anti-homosexuality Bill – and Tanzania, where more than 40 gay and lesbian activists in Tanzania were arrested in 2009. And in South Africa, in April 2008, Eudy Simelane, the openly gay star of South Africa's Banyana Banyana national female football squad, was found murdered in a park on the outskirts of Johannesburg. She had been gang-raped and brutally beaten before being stabbed to death. Since then there has been a spate of similar attacks on lesbians in the country, but few ever reach the courts and only one prosecution has been successful.
In the generalised epidemics of HIV in southern Sub-Saharan Africa, men who have sex with men have been largely excluded from HIV surveillance and research. Epidemiologic data for MSM in southern Africa are among the sparsest globally, and HIV risk among these men has yet to be characterised in the majority of countries. A cross-sectional anonymous probe of 537 men recruited with non-probability sampling among men who reported ever having had sex with another man in Malawi, Namibia, and Botswana using a structured survey instrument and HIV screening with the OraQuick© rapid test kit. The HIV prevalence among those between the ages of 18 and 23 was 8.3%; 20% among those 24–29; and 35.7% among those older than 30 for an overall prevalence of 17.4%. In multivariate logistic regressions, being older than 25 and not always wearing condoms during sex were significantly associated with being HIV-positive. Human rights abuses were prevalent, with 42.1% reporting at least one abuse. Concurrency of sexual partnerships with partners of both genders may play important roles in HIV spread in these populations. Further epidemiologic and evaluative research is needed.
The cultures of indigenous peoples have frequently been ignored when global standards on intellectual property have been set, says a new United Nations report, The State of the World's Indigenous People. It notes that global intellectual property (IP) standards are mainly based on Western legal and economic principles that emphasise private ownership of knowledge and resources. Such principles, it says, 'stand in stark contrast to indigenous worldviews, whereby knowledge is created and owned collectively and the responsibility for the use and transfer of the knowledge is guided by traditional laws and customs.' As a result, IP rules leave 'most indigenous traditional knowledge and folklore vulnerable to appropriation, privatisation, monopolisation and even biopiracy by outsiders,' the report says. Some indigenous peoples believe, the report says, that the World Intellectual Property Organization is 'not an appropriate forum to set standards because it is limited by its mandate to promoting intellectual property rights as the only viable path to protecting traditional knowledge'.
Over the past two decades, legislative and regulatory frameworks have been developed that address links between the environment and health. However, the extent to which these instruments have been streamlined within existing national legislation has not been formally documented and, according to this paper, these instruments are not currently deployed or adequately equipped, notably in Africa. It reveals weaknesses in the international and national regulatory mechanisms and their implementation, and brings to light institutional and operational deficiencies and a dramatic lack of capacity to manage hazardous wastes in an environmentally sound manner. It points to the need for an integrated institutional framework addressing human health and the environment. The Revised International Health Regulations (2005), now being implemented in all African countries, should provide a more cohesive approach to health and environment risk management. Despite the many efforts undertaken by African countries, the level of awareness and understanding of these environmental agreements among country-level policy makers remains limited.