Twenty-four ex-miners are seeking compensation from Anglo-American after contracting silicosis, an incurable and fatal lung disease. In court papers, the 24 men allege that they contracted silicosis while in the employ of Anglo-American South Africa Ltd. The case is the first of its kind in South Africa. One of Britain’s leading personal injury and human rights law firms, Leigh Day & Co, is consulting for the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), which is representing the plaintiffs. ‘The litigation has two objectives. First, to compensate miners who contracted silicosis on the gold mines, and secondly, to deal with the problem of ex-miners whose health continues to be at risk of bouts of Tuberculosis,’ said Richard Meeran, a lawyer from Leigh Day & Co.
Values, Policies and Rights
AIDS researchers, scientists and activists have welcomed the changes to South Africa's HIV and AIDS treatment policy, announced by President Jacob Zuma on World AIDS Day. The changes will mean antiretroviral (ARV) treatment can begin earlier for certain vulnerable groups, but stop short of raising the treatment threshold for all HIV-positive patients, as recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Zuma said that from April 2010, all HIV-positive children under the age of one would be eligible for treatment, regardless of their CD4 count. Pregnant women living with HIV, and patients co-infected with tuberculosis (TB), will qualify for ARVs if their CD4 count falls to 350 or less. Pregnant HIV-positive women with higher CD4 counts will be given treatment from the 14th week of pregnancy to prevent mother-to-child transmission. Currently, treatment is only given in the final trimester. Zuma also committed the government to ensuring that all health facilities in the country are equipped to offer HIV counselling, testing and treatment. At present only health facilities accredited as ARV sites by the health department can administer ARVs, which has created bottlenecks and long waiting lists at some hospitals.
This report aims to show that the humanitarian challenge of the twenty-first century demands a step-change in the quantity of resources devoted to saving lives in emergencies and in the quality and nature of humanitarian response. The report recommends that governments, external funders, the United Nations and humanitarian agencies must ensure that humanitarian needs are properly assessed, and that aid is implemented impartially, while donor governments must increase the volume of humanitarian assistance. Governments, international humanitarian agencies and local civil society must recognise the limitations of providing relief and address the underlying causes of human vulnerability. International humanitarian agencies must work much more consistently to build states' capacity to discharge their responsibilities towards their citizens as well as citizens' capacity to demand that their rights are respected. Governments, acting both bilaterally and through multilateral organisations, also have a clear duty to support other states to realise the right to life and security through exerting diplomatic pressure, as well as by offering financial aid and technical assistance.
Members of the United Nations (UN) High Level Task Force on the Right to Development, which is reviewing different development initiatives using a set of criteria it developed, have said that ensuring the right to development should become more integral to debates over intellectual property (IP) policy. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Development Agenda will play a crucial role in ensuring this integration if it happens, they added. It is ‘ironic that there is this gap between the fora that discuss intellectual property rights and [those that discuss] right to development. They follow an overlapping agenda in terms of substance,’ said Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, a member of the Task Force. ‘The core essence that levels of development need to be taken into account is still new to IP policy discussions,’ said Mohammed Gad, from the permanent mission of Egypt. WIPO should also pay more attention to its role as a UN agency, and therefore its responsibility to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), he said. In addition, WIPO should let the UN General Assembly, which is the guardian of the MDGs, know how the Development Agenda is progressing.
The World Wide Fund (WWF) has expressed its disappointment over the results of the Copenhagen Climate Summit and considered its results as ‘a gap between theory and application’. In a statement, it said: ‘The end of the summit does not mean the end, but fighting global warming requires political will to implement what was agreed upon’. Leader of the WWF Global Climate Initiative, Kim Carstensen, said: ‘They tell us it's over but it's not. The latest Copenhagen Accord draft mainly reproduced what leaders already promised before they arrived to the Danish capital. The biggest challenge, turning the political will into a legally binding agreement, after years of negotiations we now have a declaration of will which does not bind anyone and therefore fails to guarantee a safer future for next generations.’ He added: ‘A gap between the rhetoric and reality could cost millions of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars and a wealth of lost opportunities. We are disappointed but remain hopeful. Civil society will continue watching every step of further negotiations.’
This African international agreement has opened the door to a debate on the rights and protection of people displaced by natural disasters, with a nod to migration as a result of climate change. The African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa, also known as the Kampala Convention, is a ground-breaking treaty adopted by the African Union (AU) that promises to protect and assist millions of Africans displaced within their own countries. Significantly, the treaty recognises natural disasters as well as conflict and generalised violence as key factors in uprooting people. In Africa, more people are likely to be displaced as the continent experiences more frequent droughts and floods brought about by climate change. The inclusion of displacement by natural disasters was informed by the global debate on the need to develop a framework for the rights of ‘climate refugees’ – people uprooted from their homes and crossing international borders – because the changing climate threatened their survival. The treaty also calls on governments to set up laws and find solutions to prevent displacement caused by natural disasters, with compensation for those who were displaced.
The South African cabinet has approved a new policy prohibiting discrimination against soldiers and would-be recruits on the basis of their HIV status. Previously, HIV-positive members of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) could be excluded from recruitment, international deployment and promotion, but a 2008 high court decision declared such policies unconstitutional and gave the SANDF six months to amend them. The AIDS Law Project (ALP) expressed disappointment about the length of time the SANDF took to comply with the court order and the persistence of unfair discrimination against HIV-positive soldiers and recruits, but in October one of the men, Sergeant Sipho Mthethwa, became the first known HIV-positive soldier to be deployed on international service. The SANDF had argued that people living with HIV were unfit to withstand the stress and physical demands of foreign deployments. An estimated 25% of SANDF employees are HIV positive, higher than the national adult prevalence of 18%.
CIVICUS, the World Alliance for Citizen Participation, condemns the introduction of the Anti-homosexuality Bill 2009 in the Uganda Parliament on 14 October 2009. The Bill seeks to roll back international human rights obligations undertaken by Uganda by declaring that the provisions of any international legal instrument contradictory to the spirit of the Bill shall be null and void. It seeks to criminalise the work of civil society organisations that promote the rights of lesbian, gay bisexual and transgendered persons through cancellation of registration and punishment of the head of the organisation with seven years imprisonment. Other provisions of the Bill identified as repugnant by Civicus include punishment by death for HIV infected persons if they have sexual relations with a person of the same gender; life imprisonment for attempting to contract a marriage with a person of the same gender; deportation from Uganda of citizens or permanent residents if they have sexual relations with a person of the same gender; and life imprisonment for sexual relations between people of the same gender. CIVICUS urges the Parliament and the Government of Uganda to respect the human rights of its people and uphold commitments to the International Bill of Rights and the Ugandan Constitution.
International Affairs Directorate, Health Canada: March 2009
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) should be used as a tool to improve access to HIV services for disabled people, who are often marginalised in national HIV policies, according to this new report. People with disabilities (PWDs) experience all the risk factors associated with HIV, and are often at increased risk because of poverty, severely limited access to education and health care, lack of information and resources to facilitate 'safer sex', lack of legal protection, increased risk of violence and rape, vulnerability to substance abuse, and stigma. HIV and AIDS were implicitly included in the CRPD under article 25a, where ‘State Parties shall provide PWDs with the same range, quality and standard of free, affordable health care and programmes as provided to other persons, including in the area of sexual and reproductive health and population-based public health programmes’. It was also noted that disabled people could not claim their right to health services unless they were educated about these rights.
The purpose of the research programme introduced in this article is to provide new knowledge regarding comprehensive multisectoral approaches to breaking the negative cycle of poverty and mental ill-health. The programme undertakes an analysis of existing mental health policies in four African countries (Ghana, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia), and evaluates interventions to assist in the development and implementation of mental health policies in those countries, over a five-year period. The four countries in which the programme is being conducted represent a variety of scenarios in mental health policy development and implementation.