Fighting AIDS by Fighting for Human Rights and Human Dignity

Vienna Colucci, Amnesty International USA's Networks Director, answers the question: "How does a human rights organization like Amnesty International tackle a pandemic like AIDS?"

At the end of 2004, an estimated 39.4 million people around the world were living with HIV, including 2.2 million children under the age of 15. Last year alone, 4.9 million people were newly infected with HIV, and 3.1 million people died of AIDS.

The AIDS pandemic is a human rights crisis. Systemic abuses of the right to be free from discrimination, the right to prevention, treatment and care, the right to physical and mental integrity, and the right to freely receive and impart information not only exacerbate the spread of HIV/AIDS, but also fuel a cycle whereby people suspected of being infected with HIV are subjected to further human rights abuses on account of their real or perceived status.

A few years ago, I read a tribute to the late Jonathon Mann and his profound contribution to the global fight against AIDS. One passage in the article, which was written by a health reporter who had once audited Dr. Mann's "AIDS. Health and Human Rights" class at Harvard, stays with me even today. In it, the author recounts walking into Dr. Mann's class for the first time and hearing him tell his students to "Consider human rights violators as pathogens to the world."

How does a human rights organization like Amnesty tackle a pandemic like AIDS?

The answer may be less complicated than one might imagine: we keep doing what we've always done best – we go after human rights violators.

So then, who is a human rights violator in the context of AIDS?

As Amnesty activists, we can easily grasp that the state security agents in China who detained AIDS activist Dr. Wan Yanhai, the police officers in Kenya who routinely rape women in custody, the death squads in El Salvador who targeted AIDS workers, and the prison officials in Mississippi who segregated and denied medical care to prisoners with HIV/AIDS are all human rights violators.

These are the types of abuses with which we have become familiar through years of campaigning against torture, death threats, ill-treatment in detention, and the denial of freedom of expression.

But the provincial authorities in South Africa who prohibit or impede rape victims from obtaining anti-retroviral prophylaxis treatment are also human rights abusers. When the government of China refuses to acknowledge the rate at which AIDS is spreading throughout the country, and fails to provide its citizens with the information and services that would enable them to protect themselves from the HIV virus, it is also violating human rights. And when wealthy countries such as the United States fail to provide meaningful assistance to impoverished countries, or pursue unfair trade agreements that impede their governments from supporting the comprehensive prevention, treatment, and care programs that are the right of all human beings, they are not fulfilling their obligations under international law.

These are the types of abuses that we have not generally addressed in the context of our traditional Amnesty work, because they are more directly linked to the right to the highest attainable level of health, which is enshrined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. But their consequences are as grave as any of the civil and political rights abuses with which we have become familiar.

To be effective in the fight against AIDS we must put into practice what we have long espoused in principle: that all human rights are interdependent and indivisible. Amnesty's new mission, adopted at our International Council Meeting in 2001, enables us to do just that by broadening the scope of our work to encompass grave abuses of economic, social and cultural rights where these abuses arise from a policy of discrimination or involve abuses of the rights to freedom of expression, freedom from discrimination, or physical and mental integrity.

Which brings us back to Dr. Mann's point. Human rights violators are like pathogens because the highest attainable level of health is dependent upon respect for human dignity.

One need only look at who is most vulnerable to HIV/AIDS to grasp the truth of this concept. Those who are on the social and economic margins of society, who are denied access to their most basic human rights – to equality, to expression, to education, to physical integrity, to privacy, to health care, and to economic security – are the most vulnerable to HIV infection. Once infected with the HIV virus, they may be further stigmatized, subject to assault or ill-treatment, refused entry into foreign countries, turned away from medical and social services, or denied housing and employment. The fear of such discrimination may in turn discourage them from disclosing their status or seeking treatment, thus exacerbating the impact of the disease.

Our upcoming campaign against discrimination is an opportunity to shine the spotlight on a problem that goes to the very heart of the AIDS pandemic. By calling attention to the devastating impact of prejudice and stigma, by demanding an end to gender inequality, violence against women and girls, and discrimination based on sexual identity, and by promoting equal access to health care, education, and employment, we're fighting for human dignity. And by fighting for human dignity, we're fighting AIDS.

Written April 2003, Updated January 2005