HIV in a Human Rights Framework—Reflections on the Russian Experience

Chairwoman and President, Moscow Helsinki Group

Ludmilla Alexeeva joined the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG) in 1976, the year the organization was founded. The oldest contemporary Russian human rights organization, the MHG issues reports on the general human rights situation and on specific issues such as prisons, psychiatric institutions, elections, ethnic minorities, and HIV/AIDS. After joining the MHG, Ludmilla was an editor and keeper of the Group’s documents, and personally signed the first 19 reports generated by the Group. From 1977 through 1984, she supervised the publication of the collected papers of the MHG, and in May 1996 she was elected the President of the organization. From 1998 to 2004, Ludmilla Alexeeva served as Chairwoman for the International Helsinki Federation. She is the author of several books, including Soviet Dissent: Contemporary Movements for National, Religious, and Human Rights (Wesleyan University Press, 1985) and The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era (Little Brown, 1990).

President, Open Society Institute

Prior to joining the Open Society Institute in 1993, Aryeh Neier served for 12 years as Executive Director of Human Rights Watch. Before that, he spent 15 years at the American Civil Liberties Union, including eight years as National Director. Mr. Neier has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University for more than a dozen years. Mr. Neier is a frequent contributor to The Nation and The New York Review of Books, and has published in periodicals such as The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, and Foreign Policy. He has contributed to more than a hundred op-ed articles in newspapers including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and the International Herald Tribune. Author of four books, with a fifth in progress, Mr. Neier has also contributed chapters to more than twenty books. Mr. Neier, a naturalized American, was born in Nazi Germany and became a refugee at an early age. He is the recipient of three honorary degrees and the American Bar Association’s Gavel Award.