Law and Health Initiative Digest

The Law and Health Initiative Digest is a monthly round-up of advocacy and grant-making activities supported by the Law and Health Initiative (LAHI) of the Open Society Institute and Soros foundations.  Each issue contains brief highlights of LAHI activities under each of our five priority areas. 

 In This Issue

• Health and Legal Services
• Human Rights in Patient Care
• HIV/AIDS and Human Rights
• Capacity Development
• Legal Strategies in Health Monitoring

Health and Legal Services

Armenia: Drug Users Start Using Legal Aid Service
A harm reduction-based legal aid program opened its doors on October 1 in Vanadzor, Armenia, with the support of the Law and Health Initiative of the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation - Armenia.  So far the program has seen clients facing criminal charges for using or storing drugs.  Lawyers based at the harm reduction program will help clients and their families defend themselves in court and prepare legal documents.  They will assist in both criminal and civil cases, and also organize talk shows on television to raise awareness of abuses faced by drug users in the criminal justice and health systems.  A recent public opinion survey of 360 residents of Vanadzor found that over 80 percent of respondents held negative attitudes among drug users, but almost a quarter of respondents said they were willing to provide users with psychological support.  For more information, please contact Anahit Papikyan at panaida@osi.am.

Kenya: Grantees Share Experiences Integrating HIV/AIDS and Legal Services
On November 15, the Law and Health Initiative of the Open Society Initiative of East Africa (OSIEA-LAHI) convened a half day meeting of its grantees who are working to integrate legal services into existing HIV/AIDS programs.  The meeting served as a much-needed networking opportunity for the groups, and served as a forum for discussing progress and challenges and exploring possible areas of collaboration.  A common challenge identified was the lack of training resources on HIV/AIDS from a human rights perspective.  Although many legal and human rights training resources exist, they are weak on their treatment of HIV/AIDS.  There is an urgent need to build this body of knowledge for use not just by the grantees, but by other groups in the region.  The meeting also highlighted synergies and models for replication, such as CARE Kenya's economic empowerment of vulnerable communities through the Group Savings and Loans approach.  CARE Kenya offered to document this program for sharing with others and to run a training of trainers for groups wishing to implement it.  For more information, please contact Anne Gathumbi at agathumbi@osiea.org.

Human Rights in Patient Care

Ukraine: Doctors, Lawyers, and Patients Uniting to Defend Human Rights
A new initiative of the International Renaissance Foundation's Law and Health Initiative (IRF-LAHI) is supporting partnerships of medical providers, patients, and lawyers in four Ukrainian cities to provide legal advice to patients.  Abuses of patients' rights are widely observed in Ukraine, but patients rarely benefit from existing complaint mechanisms or civil legal aid services.  The aim of the IRF-LAHI-supported partnerships is to integrate legal and paralegal services into the health care system by merging the expertise and energy of practicing lawyers and human rights activists, doctors, and representatives of patients' NGOs.  Each project includes direct legal aid, human rights monitoring and reporting, roundtables and focus groups on patient protection, and media campaigns on human rights in patient care.  From November 12-14, IRF-LAHI convened the grantees for a workshop to prepare for the implementation of their projects.  Technical assistance to each of the grantees will be provided by the Kiev-based All-Ukrainian Council for Patients' Rights and Security.  According to IRF-LAHI Coordinator Maria Vynnytska, "November 2007 has become a symbolic opening of the next LAHI page in Ukraine.  We anticipate a fruitful and interesting 2008 and sincerely hope that this coalition project will make a difference in health rights implementation for the general population and vulnerable groups on the regional and national level."  For more information, please contact Maria Vynnytska at vynnytska@irf.kiev.ua.

Ukraine: Protecting the Right to Palliative Care
IFR-LAHI is collaborating with the Public Health Program's International Palliative Care Initiative (IPCI) on a legislative analysis of access to opioid pain medication.  This analysis will examine statutes, by-laws, and regulations.  It will inform future legal work in this area, as well as trainings for health care workers on how to dispense this medication.  For more information, please contact Masha Savchuk at m.savchuk@irf.kiev.ua.

HIV/AIDS and Human Rights

Southern Africa: Launch of HIV/AIDS Program and Case Law Database
The Southern Africa Litigation Centre, in collaboration with Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa (OSISA) and LAHI, established an HIV/AIDS program focused on supporting litigation and advocacy efforts to mitigate the negative impact of HIV/AIDS in southern Africa.  On December 3, the program launched an HIV/AIDS case law database.  Accessible via the web, the case law database provides free access to numerous judicial decisions from around the world on HIV/AIDS-related issues, including discrimination, privacy/confidentiality, and access to treatment (available at: www.southernafricalawcenter.org/salc/casedocket/casedocketlisting.aspx?Category=hiv.)  For more information, please contact Priti Patel at pritip@osisa.org.

Now More Than Ever! Launch and Endorsement Campaign
On November 29, the Thursday before World AIDS Day, OSI and an international coalition of leading AIDS organizations issued a ten-point declaration, "Human Rights and HIV/AIDS: Now More Than Ever" and called for a shift in the global AIDS response toward a greater focus on human rights.  The Declaration focuses on the plight of people who use drugs, sex workers, prisoners, women and girls, men having sex with men, and others at highest risk of HIV.  It points out that despite recognition of human rights in the UNGASS declaration and the Universal Access process, legal and human rights responses lag far behind other approaches to HIV control.  Many of OSI's key partners participated in the preparation of the Declaration, including the Eurasian Harm Reduction Network, the AIDS Law Project (South Africa), ARASA, the Beijing AIXIZHING Institute, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Human Rights Watch, and the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union.  The Declaration has been translated into Albanian, Bulgarian, French, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Mandarin, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Thai, and a number of African languages.  In the months leading up to the 2008 International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, organizations will have an opportunity to endorse the Declaration and hold local press events.  The Declaration and endorsement page are available at the URL below.  Please forward this link your partners and encourage them to endorse the Declaration!  For more information, please contact Ralf Jurgens at rjurgens@sympatico.ca or see: www.soros.org/initiatives/health/focus/law/articles_publications/publications/human_20071017

Capacity Development

Equal Partners Community on KARL Launched
The Equal Partners Community on OSI's KARL (Knowledge and Resource Locator) has been launched.  This is an online community of OSI, Foundation staff, and friends and partners working at the intersection of health and human rights.  It provides a vehicle for the sharing of health and human rights materials, trainings, strategies, and ideas.  Besides serving as a clearinghouse for resources, the community includes discussion forums, a calendar of health and human rights events, and contact information and bios of health and human rights experts.  For more information, please contact Olga Baraulia at vbaraulia@sorosny.org.

Georgia: First Course on Health Law, Human Rights, and Patient Care
With support from the Open Society Georgian Foundation (OSGF) and LAHI, the first course on health law, human rights, and patient care in Georgia is currently being taught at the School of Law at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs.  Topics covered by the course include legal capacity and decision-making by patients, rights to preventive health care, disability and human rights, mental health and human rights, reproductive health and rights, children's health and human rights, health and rights of the poor, HIV/AIDS stigma, human rights and public health, health reform, regulation of the medical profession, and litigation on health and social issues.  For more information, please contact Nina Kiknadze at nkiknadze@osgf.ge.

Armenia: Three-Way Funding Underway
The first three-way funding project is underway with contributions from Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation - Armenia, LAHI, and the Human Rights and Governance Grants Program (HRGGP).  This project will cover translation of Health and Human Rights: A Resource Guide for the Open Society Institute and Soros Foundations Network into Armenian and its dissemination to universities, human rights NGOs, government ministries, legal associations, and health centers.  For more information, please contact Anahit Papikyan at panaida@osi.am.

Legal Strategies in Health Monitoring

The Universal Periodic Review: An Opportunity for Monitoring and Advocacy
LAHI coordinators, grantees, and partners should be aware of the Universal Period Review (UPR), a mechanism that allows NGOs to submit reports on their government's human rights performance to the United Nations Human Rights Council.   Beginning in 2008, the Human Rights Council will periodically review the human rights obligations and commitments of all countries.  All UN Member States will be reviewed for the first time within four years.  A working group will meet three times per year for two weeks to carry out the review.  The review will take into account a report from the State concerned, as well as recommendations from other UN human rights mechanisms, NGOs, and national human rights institutions.  For more information, please see the Introduction to the Equal Partners Resource Guide or contact Jonathan Cohen at jcohen@sorosny.org.