AIDS and human rights.

Abstract

For more than a decade the international community has made efforts to promote approaches to the prevention and control of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) pandemic that are both effective and highly respectful of individual rights especially the rights of persons infected or considered to be at high risk of infection. This effort has proceeded globally and regionally as well as at the national and local levels. Although the outcome in relation to respect for rights has been far better than many public health and human rights advocates had feared few analysts or officials believe that governments have been doing enough to modify their practices in such areas as entry restrictions at national borders mandatory testing of various groups implementation of a right to medical treatment and protection of persons with AIDS against discrimination. The reasons for the apparent failures to protect rights are myriad and have roots at the local national regional and global levels. This article seeks to extend our understanding of such factors and suggests cultural economic biomedical social and political reasons for the failures. This article also considers why most of the leading international public health and human rights organizations have been less than fully effective in their efforts to promote rights together with effective HIV/AIDS prevention and control. The article then seeks to combine the analyses of these factors with a close look at the policies advanced in a wide array of documents and statements that intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have issued since 1983. This effort is shaped in part by a series of interviews conducted by the author between 1992 and 1994 as well as by many of the seminal interpretative works of scholars in diverse disciplines. (excerpt)