Take the Rights Path
A new UNAIDS report links the promotion of human rights to improved HIV healthcare
In a new report titled Take the Rights Path to End AIDS, UNAIDS reaffirms its commitment to human rights and community-based leadership as essential to the achievable goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
“Despite huge progress made in the HIV response, human rights violations are still preventing the world from ending AIDS,” states UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima. “When girls are denied education; when there is impunity for gender-based violence; when people can be arrested for who they are, or who they love; when a visit to health services is dangerous for people because of the community they are from—the result is that people are blocked from being able to access HIV services that are essential to save their lives and to end the AIDS pandemic. To protect everyone’s health, we need to protect everyone’s rights.”
Through statistics and stories, the report provides evidence that countries with human rights protections confer “markedly better” HIV-related health outcomes than countries with coercive and punitive polices toward HIV and those populations most impacted by the virus.
Alongside rescinding laws that criminalize people living with HIV and policies that promote stigma, discrimination, and marginalization, the report advocates equal access to scientific advances in prevention and treatment tools.
To achieve these goals, UNAIDS champions not only country-level political will to create positive change but also community-based responses that underscore that healthcare is a human right.
The report also features ten guest essays by experts and stakeholders such as Adeeba Kamarulzaman, MD, former President of the International AIDS Society, a founding investigator of amfAR’s TREAT Asia program and former chair of its steering committee; AIDS advocate Elton John; Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland; and Jerop Limo, Executive Director of the Ambassador for Youth and Adolescent Reproductive Health Programme, among others.
Read the full report here.
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