Advancing Human Rights: Responding to HIV

"Human rights are central to effective HIV responses."

With this core principle in mind, in May 2010 the International HIV/AIDS Alliance undertook a human rights survey among their national Linking Organisations and partners to help better understand how they were protecting and promoting rights, and how improvements could be made.

This document presents the findings of the survey.  According to the authors, the survey results suggest that a wide range of activities are being undertaken, and they offer a picture of ongoing capacity and support needs.  Some of the key findings described include primary human rights concerns such as gender-based discrimination, the divergence in understanding of what is a human rights approach, structural challenges including criminalising laws, policy and legal conflicts, organisational challenges such as lack of non-governmental organisation (NGO) coordination, shortages of human and financial resources, and lack of access to legal assistance and expertise.

In discussing the current human rights work being done by the Alliance and partner organisations, the authors discuss survey results pertaining to the set of good practice HIV programming standards published to guide the design, implementation, and evaluation of programmes.  Among survey respondents, Alliance partners reported implementation actions relevant to the programming standards for human rights in a variety of communication-related forms.  Some of these actions include: developing programming objectives to realise human rights; mainstreaming human rights education into HIV programming activities; human rights trainings for policy makers, health care workers, and police; development of advocacy plans to lobby duty bearers to fulfill international and national human rights commitments; creation of strategic partnerships with legal and justice institutions and media outlets; and training lawyers and judiciary on HIV, human rights, and legal issues.

A number of case studies are provided as examples of human rights work in action.  One such example is a look at improving access to legal redress for people living with HIV in Kenya.  This study looks at the low levels of awareness of laws and legal processes and the need to improve access to legal services among people living with, vulnerable to, and affected by HIV, which resulted in the establishment of a free, mobile legal aid clinic which travels to rural villages and urban slums to provide communities with education about HIV laws, legal advice, referrals to support organisations, and referrals to medical and social services.

As well as reviewing current activities, effort was dedicated to defining the capacity necessary to apply a human rights-based approach to HIV programming. The kinds of knowledge and skills respondents’ highlighted as important were: 

• a sound knowledge of international and regional human rights laws and their application to the country context 
• legal knowledge and skills or effective partnerships with legal organisations 
• a strong understanding of the human rights environment in the country and skills and processes to document human rights issues and use this effectively for advocacy 
• leadership capabilities to influence decision-makers and opinion leaders 
• the ability to manage an effective process to advocate for human rights 
• strong advocacy, networking, and campaigning skills