Good governance in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) was the key to dealing with HIV/Aids, Judge Edwin Cameron said on Monday.
”Where there are human rights abuse, we cannot deal properly with Aids,” Cameron said in Johannesburg at the launch of the Aids Rights Alliance for Southern Africa’s (Arasa’s) report on HIV/Aids and human rights in the SADC region.
The report is an evaluation of the steps taken by countries in the SADC region to implement international guidelines on HIV/Aids and human rights.
Cameron said the report showed that the response to HIV/Aids in the region had been less than effective.
Human rights abuse hampered the implementation of treatment of HIV/Aids.
According to the report, 85% of people who were in need of antiretrovirals did not have access to treatment.
”This is a terrible statistic when we know that Aids is a manageable condition,” Cameron said.
Michaela Clayton, director of Arasa, said the report was the first from information received from civil society on the state of human rights and HIV/Aids.
”The report outlines the number of failure by governments in the region,” Clayton said.
She said challenges facing the region were the stigma attached to Aids, limited access to health care, restrictions on right to information and lack of political leadership.
”Many countries in the region have risen to the challenge of responding to the HIV epidemic but are confronted with financial, structural, political barriers to the implementation of law reform and programmes to effectively address the HIV epidemic.”
She said the report focused on structures and partnerships for multi-sectoral response, protective legal and policy framework, access to treatment and legal services.
”It deals with the nature to which countries have used and implemented international guidelines on HIV/Aids and human rights.”
She said the findings were at one level encouraging as some progress has been reported.
”However, human rights abuses remain prevalent as a result of stigma and discrimination.”
Clayton said gender-based violence and inferior treatment of women and children continued to fuel the epidemic.
Research was conducted in Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. – Sapa