Interview with Dr Johanna Kehler, National Executive Director of the AIDS Legal Network
Dr Johanna Kehler, National Executive Director of the AIDS Legal Network says they consider themselves a human rights organisation and this dictates their approach to their work. Secondly, their work is about HIV and the special risks that women as a vulnerable group face. ALN is outspoken about women’s rights and they follow a feminist approach in their work. Kehler says they base their work on the understanding that women’s injustice and inequality is the root cause of it all. But she says she does not think they would introduce themselves as a feminist organisation. ALN works nationally, regionally and globally and there are many regional and global advocacy issues which form part of Kehler’s responsibilities.
AIDS Legal Network (ALN) works in the broader context of HIV and human rights but specifically on issues such as HIV testing, and particularly HIV testing of pregnant women and how criminalization of HIV exposure or transmission impacts on women. According to Kehler, the latter is one of the global issues they’re very busy with, and they work on both policy changes and changing lives.
At the moment, ALN is busy with raising awareness and calling for additional endorsements for the “10 Reasons Why Criminalisation of HIV Exposure or Transmission Harms Women” publication which analyses how and why policy changes towards criminalizing HIV actually harms women – even if such laws are well intended. Many countries in the region already have this in law and some are starting discussions around it.
As an overarching and ongoing activity, the organisation addresses HIV-related stigma and discrimination - whether this be relating to your sexual orientation or your gender. Kehler points out that they do a lot of advocacy work to challenge the values and norms that allow discrimination to continue. As part of that, ALN provides education and training to the community and service providers. They also do some policy research but this is not ALN’s main area.
When asked what are key challenges facing women in South Africa today Kehler says “we have certainly brilliant laws in South Africa – for example, the constitution – but in reality, women are abused and have their basic rights violated on a daily basis. In this country, basic rights are not guaranteed. So I think the really big challenge is to create an enabling environment for women to benefit from the legal protection that exists. This means basic access to quality services from health care providers through to knowing that when my rights have been abused I will get speedy access to justice. This all goes back to gender imbalance and injustice. South Africa is a very moralistic and prescriptive society and women are not afforded real spaces to make decisions. Women are not seen as capable of making decisions, let alone considered equal partners”.
Kehler emphasizes that the law is very important – she states that it is half of the enabling environment we’re talking about. However, she says we must talk about the other half – the social sphere. Unless we challenge the environment that leads to women’s rights abuses, Kehler says we’re not going to get anywhere. Unless we have leaders who are prepared to challenge fundamental values, she says this is not going to happen.
According to Kehler, the most meaningful and innovative part of their work is work that they do primarily through advocacy work and a combination of community-based education and training. Also campaign and lobby policy makers.
She says “10 reasons” has been quite successful. It is part of a campaign called ‘Moving towards Vienna’, which is about preparing for the world AIDS conference that is being held in Vienna in July. They are looking at women’s rights, specifically sexual and reproductive rights, and HIV. ALN has done a variety of things including producing journal articles, looking at the issue regionally and globally, and producing “10 Reasons” which looks at criminalisation by law. This is one of the few documents that actually looks at human rights from a women’s rights perspective. It is the only one saying ‘this is what criminalisation laws mean for women only’.
Kehler says that one of the key challenges facing civil society is the resource challenge. Linked to that she says is the issue of enormous staff turnover, and there are many reasons for this. She says “I think some people see working in civil society as an opening into greener pastures. The other thing is that strained resources mean we cannot pay staff adequately. So if you come to the organisation with xx years of experience, we can’t pay you a salary that necessarily reflects that. On top of that, we expect everyone to work long hours and have no life. We can say thank you, but this is piecemeal. It’s not appreciated from a resource point of view. So we’re not really capable of holding good staff for very long”.
According to Kehler, the other significant challenge is the context in which they work. Each day, staff are listening and responding to horrific rights abuses that are still happening. For example, one facilitator in front of 25 people who has to deal with it on the spot – and there is an enormous need for debriefing and we don’t always have the capacity to do that adequately.
Working in very political environment also has its challenges. We have to tread a fine line between passionate and strategic responses. Every time you watch the evening news you want to write a letter. We often feel fired up; and say “this is fundamentally wrong and I want to say something”. I’m happy that we do have this passion but I think we have to also be strategic and cautious about what we say about what and where we publish it. So we try to work in collaboration with others when dealing with the media. Isolated voices are easy to be overheard and shut down. Ten voices make it more difficult to do that and it is more likely that one will be heard.
When asked how do they deal with these challenges, she says:”I wish I had the solution!” She further states that they try and debrief as much as possible. Her phone is on 24 hours and everyone can call whenever they need. They tried to schedule debriefing sessions but that doesn’t always work because people are working on different projects in different parts of the country. Directors often forget that we could do with some debriefing ourselves! says Kehler.
A positive learning has been about working in collaboration, and one of their success stories has been working in partnership around “10 reasons”. This project has a long history and was drafted in September last year by ALN and ARASA and is linked to the Athena network (which has a global remit). This collaboration from the beginning was endorsed by global audiences and positively perceived. It helped ALN get a message out loud and strong.
Although they had some bad experiences working in partnership as well, Kehler says on the overall, partnership working strengthens each organisation’s impact. She says she thinks they are in danger of reinventing the wheel and working in the same old way and resources are getting slimmer. So in this context of the “10 Reasons”, they are working much more in collaboration than they did on similar projects three years ago.
When asked if her organisation is struggling to get sufficient funding, Kehler quips “ Yes, sure, we are struggling! I think there is a kind of default of design. Civil society has never been well paid and resourced. Human rights organisations find it hard to get funding to start off with and now international donors do not consider South Africa a priority anymore. We’ve seen global trends of women’s rights and HIV funding getting cut if it is not directly related to treatment access. I think funding really impacts on human resources issues. The global financial crisis has meant that there is a great deal of financial instability and very little security beyond twelve months. I don’t know what advice I can give, except maybe: hang in there!”
She points out that one issue is that we have not successfully made the various links between violence and HIV risks. There are more organisations talking about it, however in terms of impacting upon real life situations, we have not done enough. We need to do more in terms of challenging the status quo and norms and values from an everyday point of view.
Kehler’s concerns are that organisations do usually not collaborate well. Sha says: ”we work in isolation and in our niche. I mean, you have to go to CSW in New York to meet your partner in Cape Town. I think there’s a basic turf fight and women’s rights organizations are territorial about the issues. Further, women’s rights and HIV organizations are not necessarily partnering well. This doesn’t help the cause or any single organisation. I also think that the global funding crisis has made people stingier with their thinking and their ideas. This doesn’t increase our funding potential because funders will work out that we don’t talk to each other. I think there are certain political discussions we don’t have, for example around the terminology we use. What do we mean by ‘creating an enabling environment?’ So as civil society we have successfully contributed to creating laws but we have not had much of an impact in the environment where laws are implemented”.
According to Kehler, we are not really dealing with underlying issues. For example, there are women’s organisations that strongly support criminalisation – that is one example that that is very close to home for ALN.
And finally, she says “I think women’s organizations can be as exclusive as those we criticize. Where are the lesbian women? Where are the sex workers? Where are the transgender people? We often exclude people from our own organisations and activities, and this is a huge problem”.