Human Rights: the means and the end for HIV/AIDS
HIV prevalence by region.
“The goal of realizing human rights is fundamental to the global fight against AIDS. And in a world facing a terrible epidemic – one that has already spread further, faster and to more devastating effect than any other in human history – winning the fight against AIDS is a precondition for achieving rights worth enjoying.”
—Dr Peter Piot, UNAIDS Executive Director
The HIV/AIDS pandemic presents us with the greatest challenge to human rights in the world today. The 2010 UNAIDS Report states that “The Millennium Development Goals are intertwined. Without achieving substantive progress towards the HIV-specific Goal 6, few other Goals are likely to be reached; likewise, without integration and significant progress towards most other Goals being made, Goal 6 will probably not be achieved.” This statement recognizes the urgency and gravity of winning the fight against HIV while suggesting that such a win is not only the ‘ends’ but also the ‘means’ to realizing human rights and progressing development. Unfortunately, while human rights treaties are signed and international conventions of human rights have been enshrined in constitutions for many developing countries, the rhetoric of these political progressions have left much to be desired by people living with HIV at a grassroots level.
In the late 1980’s, the HIV/AIDS pandemic set the stage for human rights to be embraced by a public health agenda. The first case of collaborating human rights with a health strategy, debuted by the right to non-discrimination for people living with HIV/AIDS (WHO’s first global response to AIDS,1987), went on to inextricably link human rights to both the response and the underlying cause of the epidemic. Yet at the epicenter of the HIV pandemic of SubSaharan Africa, many rights are only ‘progressively’ being realized and as such, progress in controlling the disease is slow and meeting international goals (MDG’s and WHO targets) to reverse it’s spread are often unmet. Furthermore, ESCR’s are often stalled all together due to high costs associated to their realization and are “on permanent hold, ostensibly pending economic regeneration of the continent”.
According to the 2010 UNAIDS report, 22.5million people are living with HIV in this region today. Although HIV/AIDS has been identified as a significant challenge to international security, peace and development, the pandemic continues it’s brutal scourge on vulnerable and stigmatized groups of society. One argument for this may be that the right to health, when measured against ambiguous standards such as ‘the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health’, gives way for economic priorities to take precedence. However, in direct contradiction, a society with high prevalence of HIV could argue that health is a means in itself for economic development.
In the context of HIV, the right to health as defined by, “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” is nearly impossible to achieve without protecting other rights such as the right to non-discrimination and the right to life. A case in point is denial of access to antiretroviral treatment for those living with HIV and in need of such treatment. Where the treatment saves lives and greatly reduces the chance of transmission, the lack of access to such drugs could be considered a violation of the fundamental right to life which is enshrined in the constitutions of most countries where HIV/AIDS is most prevalent and where need for such treatment is highest.
In 2006, the International Guidelines on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights (UNAIDS/OHCHR,1998) was amended to include universal access to treatment as a necessary provision regarding the right to health. Reflecting this decision is the 6th Millennium Development Goal which includes, ‘universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it’. The specific provision of treatment for HIV is ‘progressively being realized’ yet for the people and children who are not able to access this treatment, their lives and their right to life remain unprotected.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic provides us an example of the indivisibility of human rights and how inextricably linked human rights and health must be in order to win the fight against HIV/AIDS. Jonathan Mann, the first Director of the World Health Organization’s Global Programme on AIDS, portrayed international law of human rights as a comprehensive framework to which public health practitioners could anchor responsibility for addressing the underlying causes of HIV/AIDS. The value in a rights based approach is it’s foundation in human dignity and equality which is a universal concept. This approach to the HIV health crisis implies that human rights act as both the framework and instruments for health development as well as acting as a measuring stick for progress towards controlling HIV.
HIV AIDS still presents to us the greatest challenge to human rights we have to face, cutting across civil and political rights as equally as ESC rights and challenging our society to protect those vulnerable to and those made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS while winning the fight against HIV/AIDS. This end goal is not achieved by either HIV being controlled or by human rights being realized, it is achieved when both are recognized to be the means and the end simultaneously.
Bibliography:
Mary Robinson speaking at the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001
UNAIDS Report 2010, http://issuu.com/unaids/docs/unaids_globalreport_2010
Mark Heywood and Morna Cornell, Human Rights and AIDS in South Africa: From Tight Margin to Left Margin, Health and Human Rights. Vol. 2, No. 4, HIV/AIDS and Human Rights. Part I: The Roots of Vulnerability (1998),pp70
Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2002, 80 (12)
© 2011, Rachel Parsons. All rights reserved.