From its earliest formulation, the international HIV response has attempted to harness human rights as a central element of public health practice. Policy initiatives aimed at eliminating stigma and discrimination of ...From its earliest formulation, the international HIV response has attempted to harness human rights as a central element of public health practice. Policy initiatives aimed at eliminating stigma and discrimination of affected people would enable them to access health and social services, practice safe behaviors and thereby protect public health. However, this response was characterized by tensions between differing perceptions of public health and human rights and, with the advent of effective treatments, between those who regarded behavioral and biomedical interventions as competing, if not mutually exclusive, approaches. A central theme in all of these elements has been control： control of the virus, control of the behaviors of people affected, control of policy and control of rights. HIV infection is both a cause and a consequence of human rights abuses, but for many people these two aspects are compounded into the same lived predicament; a predicament over which many feel they should have control. The test-and-treat debates at the 2010 IAS Conference demonstrated this as presenters and participants openly clashed over proposals to implement what many see as coercive measures in settings where viral transmission and the public health/human rights collaboration might both be regarded as now ＂out of control＂. This paper will explore issues of control in the international HIV response and how authority, in the forms of law and justice, is contested in that response.展开更多
文摘From its earliest formulation, the international HIV response has attempted to harness human rights as a central element of public health practice. Policy initiatives aimed at eliminating stigma and discrimination of affected people would enable them to access health and social services, practice safe behaviors and thereby protect public health. However, this response was characterized by tensions between differing perceptions of public health and human rights and, with the advent of effective treatments, between those who regarded behavioral and biomedical interventions as competing, if not mutually exclusive, approaches. A central theme in all of these elements has been control： control of the virus, control of the behaviors of people affected, control of policy and control of rights. HIV infection is both a cause and a consequence of human rights abuses, but for many people these two aspects are compounded into the same lived predicament; a predicament over which many feel they should have control. The test-and-treat debates at the 2010 IAS Conference demonstrated this as presenters and participants openly clashed over proposals to implement what many see as coercive measures in settings where viral transmission and the public health/human rights collaboration might both be regarded as now ＂out of control＂. This paper will explore issues of control in the international HIV response and how authority, in the forms of law and justice, is contested in that response.
