UN to Uganda - Scrap Anti-Gay Laws

posted: 18/01/2010

The UN's top human rights official has called on Uganda to drop its proposed anti-homosexuality law that would impose the death penalty on gay and lesbian people with HIV, among others. Navi Pillay, the UN's high commissioner for human rights, joined a growing chorus condemning the bill as discriminatory and called for homosexuality to be decriminalised in the country.
 

"The bill proposes draconian punishments for people alleged to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered – namely life imprisonment, or in some cases, the death penalty," she said. "To criminalise people on the basis of colour or gender is now unthinkable in most countries. The same should apply to an individual's sexual orientation."
 

Bill fails human rights standards
Pillay called on the Ugandan ¬government to put the draft bill on hold because it breaches international human rights standards. ¬Pillay said Uganda had a generally "good track record" of co-operating with human rights mechanisms but the bill "threatens to seriously damage the country's reputation in the international arena".
The UN said Uganda's parliament may discuss the bill as early as this week. It has provoked criticism from western governments and gay rights groups and protests in London, New York and Washington.
 

President worries about threat to international aid

President Museveni has recently begun distancing himself from the bill. In his first public comments on the issue, he told a meeting of his ruling party that their handling of the bill "must take into account our foreign policy interests".
He said: "When I was at the Commonwealth conference, what was [the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper] talking about? The gays. UK prime minister Gordon Brown ... what was he talking about? The gays."
Nsaba Buturo, the ethics and integrity minister, has said a revised law would now probably limit the maximum penalty for gay people with HIV to life in prison rather than execution.
 

Existing anti-gay law has 14 year jail penalty
Homosexual acts are already punishable by up to 14 years in jail in Uganda. The private member's bill, tabled last year, would raise that penalty to life in prison. And it proposes the death penalty for a new offence of "aggravated homosexuality" – defined as when one of the participants is a minor, or HIV-positive, or a "serial offender".
 

Sneaks and harassers charter
It could also lead to a prison sentence of up to three years for anyone failing to report within 24 hours the identities of any lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered person.
A local independent newspaper, the Daily Monitor, quoted parliament's speaker as saying the legislative body would debate the bill despite President Museveni's call for more talks. Edward Ssekandi said: "There is no way we can be intimidated by remarks from the president to stop this bill."
 

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HIV and Human Rights Day

posted: 10/12/2009

Today is World Human Rights Day. HIV is a litmus test of how well countries promote and protect our human rights.
 

HIV and Human Rights

As UNAIDS tells us, to empower people to claim their rights, to protect human dignity and to prevent the transmission of HIV, the following rights should be protected so that people will come forward for HIV information, education and means of protection, and will be supported to avoid risky behaviour: 

• Non-discrimination : protected against discrimination if seek help or are HIV+ 
• Right to privacy : protected against mandatory testing; HIV status kept confidential 
• Right to liberty and freedom of movement : protected against imprisonment, segregation, or isolation in a special hospital ward
• Right to education/information : access to all HIV prevention education and information and sexual and reproductive health information and education
• Right to health : access to all health care prevention services, including for sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis, voluntary counseling and testing, and to male and female condoms

 What are the Human Rights?

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights emphasises the rights to

• life, liberty, and security of person;
• to freedom from arbitrary arrest;
• to a fair trial;
• to be presumed innocent until proved guilty;
• to freedom from interference with the privacy of one's home and correspondence;
• to freedom of movement and residence;
• to asylum, nationality, and ownership of property;
• to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, opinion, and expression;
• to association, peaceful assembly, and participation in government;
• to social security, work, rest, and a standard of living adequate for health and well-being;
• to education; and to participation in the social life of one's community.

UNAIDS and Human Rights 
 

Zimbabwe - Forced Returns Protests

posted: 30/10/2009

Refugee and HIV organisations were among those angered and concerned by Home Office ministers saying that Zimbabwe is now safe enough to resume the forcible return of thousands of refused asylum seekers.
 

Bad timing?

The announcement by the immigration minister, Phil Woolas (MP for the NW constituency of Oldham East and Saddleworth), came just as the UN's monitor on torture was forcibly expelled from Harare, and when Amnesty International warned that the country was "on the brink of sliding back into violence".
 

Woolas told MPs that he was encouraging Zimbabweans whose asylum application in Britain had been rejected to return home voluntarily by including a £2,000 cash payment in a total repatriation package worth up to £6,000. But he also said the UK Border Agency was resuming work on a programme of enforced returns to Zimbabwe.
 

"We have always expected those not to be in need of protection to return home. We prefer these individuals to return voluntarily, and the enhancements to the assisted voluntary return scheme will support this," he said. "But where they choose not to do so, we are bound to take steps over time to enforce the law."
 

George House Trust comment

That’s perhaps more bluff and bluster, for the benefit of the press and some sections of the public, to make him seem to be tougher on returns. His formal statement says something less scary – the key sentence is:

“The UK Border Agency will therefore be starting work over the autumn on a process aimed at normalising our returns policy to Zimbabwe, moving towards resuming enforced returns progressively as and when the political situation develops.”

The key words we take comfort from are here (our italics) “moving towards resuming enforced returns progressively as and when the political situation develops.” So he means the political situation is not yet right to restart forced returns. Any government that rushes to resume forced returns to Zimbabwe faces the prospect of a second defeat in the courts.

Zimbaweans are the largest nationality group among expatriate Africans with HIV in the UK, which is why this policy change is significant. Well over 650 Zimbabweans diagnosed with HIV are living in NW England.

High Court ended returns in 2006

Forcible returns to Zimbabwe were suspended in September 2006, when high court judges ruled that those who could not demonstrate their loyalty to Robert Mugabe's regime would face persecution on their return. It is thought there are more than 10,000 refused asylum seekers from Zimbabwe in Britain. Only recently more than 2,000 fled to the UK during Zimbabwe's elections in 2008.
 

The Home Office statement says there have been "positive changes" in Zimbabwe in the past six months, including less indiscriminate violence, more basic commodities are available and the economy and schools have improved since the formation of the unity government. Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), is prime minister under President Mugabe.
Refugee groups say only 89 people went back to Zimbabwe under the British government's voluntary returns programme between January and August.
 

Safety claims ridiculed
The Refugee Council said the Home Office's judgment on life in Zimbabwe was ludicrous. "In the past few days allegations of arrest, intimidation and harassment of supporters of the MDC and of human rights defenders have been widely reported," said the council's chief executive, Donna Covey. "Our government is showing a cavalier attitude to the safety of refugees who have stood up for democracy and human rights. After the farcical attempts to return Iraqis and Afghans in recent weeks against UN advice, it is of great concern that the government are now considering returns to Zimbabwe."
 

Sandy Buchan, of Refugee Action, also said the move was premature: "We still see more Zimbabweans asking for help and advice than any other single nationality, and many are terrified of returning to their country." And Patson Muzuwa, of the Zimbabwe Association said "It is very premature of them to think of forced removals," adding that Woolas's statement was intended to pave the way for a programme of forcible removals last attempted in 2004 and 2005.
 

Source 
 

UN torture investigator refused entry to Zimbabwe
 

Minister's Statement on changing the policy on returning people to Zimbabwe 
 

Changes to the voluntary returns package
 
 

Human Rights Wrong for Healthcare

posted: 15/10/2009

A controversial article in the Financial Times  wades into the international debate about the “right to health”.

The notion of a “right to health” began in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. One of its most eloquent advocates is Dr Paul Farmer, who earned fame with heroic efforts to give people access even to complex medical treatment amid extreme poverty in Haiti and Rwanda, saying that healthcare was “a fundamental human right, which should be available free”.

The article argues that the “right to health” and the efforts devoted to achieving universal access to HIV medicines across the globe may have cost more lives than it saved. The pragmatic approach – directing public resources to where they have the most health benefits for a given cost – historically achieved far more than the moral approach.

Read the full article here

Deporting - Ignoring Human Rights

posted: 28/09/2009

National governments should reconsider their policies for deporting people living with HIV, Human Rights Watch said in a new report.

The organisation calls on governments, international agencies and donors to ensure that HIV-positive migrants have access to antiretroviral therapy when detained and to ensure that, if deported, migrants are able to maintain access to treatment and care.

The report was co-authored with the African HIV Policy Network, Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe and the European AIDS Treatment Group, and describes cases from a wide range of countries around the world.

International human rights and refugee law has long prohibited deportations to a state where the person deported would be at risk of being subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

However the authors argue that national deportation procedures are often insufficient or underdeveloped to protect the rights of people living with HIV against return to such conditions. If treatment or social support is inadequate, they believe that this can amount to inhuman or degrading treatment.

The European Court of Human Rights is one of the bodies that has interpreted this human rights obligation in a narrow way, so that if antiretroviral treatment is in principle available in the receiving country and if the disease has not yet reached a terminal stage, deportation would not be considered to constitute inhuman or degrading treatment.

The authors note that in some situations individuals may be deported for reasons that are unrelated to their HIV status. However countries which have restrictions on entry or residence of foreigners with HIV may deport people because of their HIV status alone.

UAE tops for deportations

For example, in 2008 the United Arab Emirates deported 1,518 people infected with HIV, hepatitis B and C, or tuberculosis. Migrant workers are subject to mandatory HIV testing, usually without counselling, and those who test positive are detained, without antiretroviral treatment, and then returned to their country of origin, with no referral system to medical services.

A comparable system in South Korea was successfully challenged in the Seoul High Court on public health and human rights grounds. However mandatory testing for foreign workers remains in place.

South Africa has a large number of migrant workers, mostly from other countries in the region, and while it does not have restrictions on residence based on HIV status, individuals may be deported for other reasons. Human Rights Watch believes that the deportation of people with HIV to neighbouring countries where medical care is inadequate is against both the South African constitution and international treaties.

It notes cases where migrant workers, sometimes co-infected with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, have been left at the border of their home country, without any treatment or referral. The authors say that this can amount to a death sentence.

The United States is also criticised for not ensuring access to treatment either while people are detained before deportation, or at their destination.

The report notes that even if antiretroviral treatment is available in principle in a country, regional unavailability, an individual’s lack of understanding of the health system, language barriers, lack of community ties, waiting lists, lack of second or third-line drugs, and medication shortages can all make treatment unavailable in practice.

3 Steps for governments

The report’s authors recommend that national governments:

• Publish comprehensive information about HIV-positive individuals deported, including the numbers of individuals removed, grounds for removal, and countries to which they are deported.
• Review national standards on deportation of people living with HIV to ensure compliance with international prohibitions on sending individuals to situations where they may face inhuman or degrading treatment.
• Where feasible, contact health authorities and providers in each deportee’s country of origin, devise a plan for continuing to assure care without interruption, and provide a temporary medication supply if necessary.

Speaking at an event to launch the report at the House of Commons in London, Titise Kode of the African HIV Policy Network noted that the report described situations across the world that also had parallels in the United Kingdom.

She called for greater coherence between the policies of the Home Office, the Department of Health and the Department for International Development, and urged the UK government to ensure that deportation or removal did not lead to withdrawal of treatment.

Online edition Returned to risk: deportation of HIV-positive migrants. Human Rights Watch, 2009.

pdf version Returned to Risk: deportation of HIV-positive migrants. Human Rights Watch, 2009

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