AIDS activists, experts push for human rights at conference (Feature)

Jul 22, 2010, 17:28 GMT

Vienna - Activists and experts at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna said the human rights of people infected with HIV must be a priority if the spread of the virus that causes AIDS is to be stopped.

Human rights are the main theme of the 18th biennial event, which ends Friday. Another focus is the rapid spread of HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Participants in the conference said that rights are an essential part of any attempt to slow and reverse an epidemic that has so far claimed some 25 million lives.

'We have to implement HIV prevention as a human right,' said Anna Shakarishvili, Ukraine coordinator for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Rights are important, advocates said, because discrimination against people with HIV, intolerance towards homosexuals and criminalization of intravenous drug use drive underground those in need of treatment or at risk of becoming infected.

'The challenge is to translate a rhetorical theme into real action on the ground,' Joe Amon, director of health and human rights at US- based Human Rights Watch, told the German News Agency dpa.

But, he said, there's an opportunity 'that the momentum for a rights-based approach, for greater evidence-based approaches (to fighting HIV) is going to pull together.'

Key to the success of HIV prevention programmes is involving the affected communities.

Meena Saraswathi Seshu, of the Indian organization SANGRAM, said encouraging sex workers to practice safe sex means respecting them and their opinions. In her work, she learned that female sex workers were more knowledgeable about men and their attitudes than she was.

'You give us the condoms, and we'll do the rest,' the sex workers told her.

Coercive measures don't work, activists said. Ordinary people are going to have to give up their prejudices if the HIV plague is to be defeated.

'All people have rights regardless of whom they have sex with,' said Roman Dudnik of the AIDS Foundation East-West.

Several studies published this week in The Lancet, a UK medical journal, recommended that governments adopt non-coercive treatment programmes for drug users and provide them with antiretroviral treatment if they are infected with HIV.

In a separate commentary, the editors of the influential journal expressed support for the Vienna Declaration, a statement published last month calling for the decriminalization of illicit drug use.

Thursday, the first lady of Georgia, Sandra Roelofs, became the most prominent signatory of the declaration from Eastern Europe or Central Asia.

The move is significant because of Georgia's history of repressive measures towards drug users, said Evan Wood of the International Center for Science and Drug Policy, based in Canada.

'It's fantastic, that's exactly what we're looking for,' he said.

There are some 2,700 people in Georgia living with HIV, according to UNAIDS, and only 1 per cent of intravenous drug users have access to needle exchange programmes. The country's population is 4.6 million.