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
• HIV/AIDS and Human Rights
• International AIDS Conference 2008
• Capacity Development
• Other News

Health and Legal Services

Tipping the Balance Report Launch in Ukraine
The rate of HIV has been on a steady incline in Ukraine, particularly among people who inject drugs. Several agencies have designed programs to help prevent HIV by ensuring access to sterile syringes, providing social services to drug users and people living with HIV or AIDS, and offering treatment for drug dependence, including buprenorphine treatment. However, a new report from OSI and the International Renaissance Foundation finds that few programs in Ukraine offer legal services to people who use drugs-despite the fact that legal services are easy to administer and complementary to health care. The report profiles five organizations in Ukraine that have successfully integrated legal services into HIV prevention and treatment programs. The organizations-located in Kyiv, Kherson, Lviv, Nikolaev, and Poltava-have increased access to legal services by placing lawyers at locations where drug users already go for needle exchanges, counseling, and referrals to drug dependence treatment. Likewise, the programs have increased access to harm reduction by drawing in new clients who come for the legal services and stay for the HIV prevention services. For more information, please contact Mariya Vynnytska at vynnytska@irf.kiev.ua.

Legal Support to Advance Palliative Care in Africa
In a unique four-way collaboration between LAHI, the Open Society Initiative for East Africa, the International Palliative Care Initiative and the General Africa Initiatives, the African Palliative Care Association has received a grant to implement a project in four African countries (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and South Africa) that links palliative care providers with legal experts to ensure that legal restrictions that hinder drug availability across Africa are adequately addressed. Some of these challenges include diagnostic challenges; rudimentary health and social care infrastructure; a paucity of trained palliative care professionals; logistical challenges to service provision; the limitations of existing service models in an era of antiretroviral (ARV) therapy; a donor-driven service provision agenda and most importantly, negative drug environments. Drug access is crucial to high quality and effective pain and symptom management.  However, in many African countries access to even the most simple pain-relieving medication to treat opportunistic infections is legally restricted. The grant entails a technical assistance package that will address these legal challenges that hinder palliative care development in Africa.  For more information, please contact Anne Gathumbi at agathumbi@osiea.org.

HIV/AIDS and Human Rights

OSIEA-LAHI Report Launch in Uganda
Following an assessment conducted in Uganda on HIV/AIDS, legal services and human rights, OSIEA-LAHI released a report highlighting the assessment findings on May 28, 2008. The report launch was preceded by advocacy meetings with key policy makers, government departments and international and local organizations to discuss the key findings and recommendations of the report. Seven meetings were held in total with UNAIDS, UNDP, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Uganda Aids Commission, the Uganda Human Rights Commission, and the Parliamentary Committee on HIV/AIDS. Other meetings were held after the launch with potential and existing grantees to influence programming based on the findings and recommendations of the report. These organizations included the AIDS Support Organization (TASO), African Palliative Care Initiative (APCA), the Uganda Network on Law, Ethics, and HIV/AIDS, and Uganda National Health Consumers' Organization (UNHCO). The report is online at: http://www.soros.org/initiatives/health/focus/law/articles_publications/publications/aidsuganda_20080528 . For more information, please contact Anne Gathumbi at agathumbi@osiea.org.

Launch of Women and HIV Testing Fact Sheet
In July 2008, LAHI published a new fact sheet, Women and HIV Testing:  Policies, Practices, and the Impact of Health and Human Rights.  The fact sheet looks at UNAIDS and WHO guidance on testing, as well as local and international laws, and provides information on the impact of HIV testing policies on women's health and human rights.  It is based on two papers commissioned by LAHI on the HIV testing of pregnant women and premarital HIV testing (available at: www.soros.org/health ).  For more information, please contact Tamar Ezer at tezer@sorosny.org.

International AIDS Conference 2008

First-ever Human Rights Networking Zone and Rally at an International AIDS Conference
Human rights issues received unprecedented attention at the Mexico City International AIDS Conference, with the first-ever Human Rights Networking Zone and International Rally for Human Rights and HIV/AIDS at an International AIDS Conference.  The Networking Zone, sponsored by OSI along with the Levi-Strauss Foundation and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, featured skills-building sessions, "meet the experts" events, a film and video lounge, and daily petitions on HIV-related human rights issues.  HIV and human rights groups from around the world distributed their materials and publications, and used the Zone as a networking opportunity throughout the conference.  The Zone culminated on August 7 with an International Rally on Human Rights and HIV/AIDS, where thousands of people marched and called on prominent AIDS leaders to place human rights at the center of the global AIDS response.  The rally marked the over 600 organizational endorsements received for the award-winning declaration sponsored by LAHI, Human Rights and HIV/AIDS: Now More Than Ever.  For more information, please contact Ralf Jürgens at rjurgens@sympatico.ca or Jonathan Cohen at jcohen@sorosny.org.

Skills-Buildings at the International AIDS Conference
LAHI organized and facilitated four skills-building sessions at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico this August.  Three of the sessions dealt with advocating for human rights in the HIV/AIDS response, presented as part of official conference proceedings, at the ecumenical pre-conference, and for youth in the human rights networking zone.  These sessions examined the concept of human rights, specific human rights implicated by the AIDS epidemic, rights-based responses, and the critical need for a focus on human rights.  The fourth skills-building session highlighted the integration of legal support into HIV programs as a fundamental component of universal access.  This session explored practical models to integrate legal services into palliative care, harm reduction, and HIV/AIDS clinical programs to address underlying HIV vulnerability, enable comprehensive care, and increase access to justice to underserved and marginalized communities.  For more information, please contact Tamar Ezer at tezer@sorosny.org or Jonathan Cohen at jcohen@soronsy.org.

LAHI and Partners Point to Dangerous Trend in HIV Legislation
A LAHI-sponsored press conference in Mexico City called attention to a wave of misguided legislation threatening to undermine global anti-AIDS efforts.  South African Justice Edwin Cameron and other legal experts decried laws criminalizing HIV exposure and transmission, denying people access to the most effective HIV prevention measures, restricting HIV education for young people, and imposing mandatory HIV tests that violate international human rights standards while doing nothing to protect people from HIV.  Cameron, who gave a rousing plenary address on the closing day of the conference, singled out laws criminalizing HIV exposure and transmission as a particular threat to anti-HIV efforts.  "Criminal law is simply the wrong framework for dealing with HIV transmission," Cameron said. "Everywhere it has been tried, it has been counterproductive and applied unjustly."  The press conference also featured LAHI's East Africa coordinator, Anne Gathumbi, as well as Susan Timberlake from UNAIDS and Richard Pearshouse from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.  During the conference, LAHI and other partners distributed a draft document, 10 Reasons Why Criminalizing HIV Transmission or Exposure is Bad Public Policy, which will be published in late 2008.  The draft is currently available for comment until October 10.  For more information, please contact Jonathan Cohen at jcohen@sorosny.org.

LAHI Grantees at IAC 2008
At AIDS 2008, LAHI grantees' work was featured in many sessions and presentations during the conference and pre-conference events. At a symposium "Strategies for Change: Breaking Barriers to Prevention, Treatment, and Care for Women," organized by OSI, LAHI advisor Catherine Mumma and consultant Corinne Carey led a panel discussion on legal and advocacy strategies for a more "woman-friendly" response to HIV.  At the Human Rights Networking Zone, organized by OSI's Public Health Program and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, LAHI staff and partners held a session on "Integrating Legal Support into HIV Programs: A Fundamental Component of Universal Access." A skills-building session on "Advocating for Human Rights and HIV/AIDS: Now More than Ever," organized together with AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA), provided participants with tools necessary to become effective advocates for human rights approaches to HIV that are real, practical, and cost-effective. LAHI grantees and partners participated in poster exhibitions showcasing LAHI's work on integrating harm reduction and legal services in Ukraine; on scaling up HIV testing and counseling as a human rights imperative; on a rights-based approach to HIV/AIDS treatment and care (prepared by the Christian Health Association of Kenya); and on the HIV/AIDS and human rights work of LAHI core grantees in Southern Africa. For more information, please contact Jonathan Cohen at jcohen@soronsy.org or Tamar Ezer at tezer@sorosny.org.

Capacity Development

Courses Strengthening Legal Capacity in the Access to Medicines Movement
Two courses, sponsored by the Access to Essential Medicines Initiative (AEMI) and LAHI, on access to medicines, intellectual property, and human rights have been successfully piloted at the law faculties of the Universities of Pretoria and KwaZulu Natal in South Africa.  The courses targeted law instructors, masters of law students, civil society, and government officials in sub-Saharan Africa with an interest in these issues.  Course materials can be found at www.wcl.american.edu/pijip/go/humanrights.  The pilot has led to the development of a submission to the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights to identify access to essential medicines as a component of the right to health, outline the standards governing it, and establish a working group to ensure its implementation at the national level; and to the planning of country campaigns in Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zambia.  The hope is for these short courses to be taught annually, and course instructors are currently adapting a version for parliamentary trainings at the SADC (Southern African Development Community) Parliamentary Forum.  For more information, please contact Roxana Bonnell at roxanabonnell@gmail.com or Tamar Ezer at tezer@soronsy.org. 

Health and Human Rights Resource Guide Updated
In the past several months, there have been several exciting updates to the Health and Human Rights: A Resource Guide, produced in collaboration with the OSI's Public Health Program and the Human Rights and Governance Grants Program, as a practical tool for advocates working at the intersection of health and human rights.  A new chapter focusing on mental health and human rights has been added to the chapters on patient care, HIV/AIDS, harm reduction, sexual health, and the health of minority communities.  Each chapter has fact sheets, jurisprudence, case studies, bibliographies, and glossary definitions.  Additionally, partial guides have been created for each individual chapter with an introduction of general health and human rights information.  Certain chapters and partial guides are also now available in Romanian, Russian, and Spanish.  All this material is can be found at www.equalpartners.info.  For more information, please contact Olga Baraulia at vbaraulia@sorosny.org.

Other News

Panel on Health Emergencies and Human Rights at the International Human Rights Funders Group Meeting
LAHI organized a panel, "Health Emergencies:  Are Human Rights Funders Prepared?" at the July 21 International Human Rights Funders Group Meeting.  The panel examined coercive government responses to health emergencies, such as tuberculosis patients locked up in South Africa, SARS information censored in China, and laws criminalizing HIV transmission sweeping Africa amidst calls for mandatory HIV tests, which curtail basic rights to due process, information, and equality.  The panel also explored pragmatic, rights-based solutions to disease control and concrete ways human rights funders can support these efforts.  The panel was facilitated by Françoise Girard, the Director of OSI's Public Health Program, and the panelists were Tawanda Mutasah from OSI and Joe Amon from Human Rights Watch.  For more information, please contact Françoise Girard at fgirard@sorosny.org or Tamar Ezer at tezer@sorosny.org.