With AIDS into its third decade, there is increasing attention and need for human rights interventions to protect individuals with HIV/AIDS from discrimination and to protect human rights and diversity in general. For example, in countries where homosexuality is illegal or not tolerated, men having sex with men is ongoing, but it remains underground and illicit. In such places, interventions to protect such men through condom and specialized information campaigns are hampered.
HIV interventions are failing in this population as well as with drug users. Such interventions have failed in the past because people in positions of leadership have used narrow definitions of morality to exclude certain risk groups from HIV interventions. These groups – which include homosexual, lesbians and transsexuals, men who have sex with men, sex workers and drug users – when seen through a human rights lens, are not only eligible for the best educational, medical and support services that our societies can offer, but are also deserving of extra attention as people who are often marginalized and at increased risk, due to reasons that are far from their own responsibility.
Back to the Update on the HIV/AIDS Epidemic 2008
|
.gif){kind=small}
| Contact us