attitudes and prejudices surrounding HIV A

The use of formal standards and their implementation through Government process and law alone cannot change the negativeinto respect for human rights. Public programming explicitly designed to reduce the existing stigma has been shown to help create a supportive environment which is more tolerant and understanding.32 The reach of such programming should be a mixture of general and focused programmes using various media, including creative and dramatic presentations, compelling ongoing information campaigns for tolerance and inclusion and interactive educational workshops and seminars. The goal should be to challenge beliefs based on ignorance, prejudices and punitive attitudes by appealing to human compassion and identifying with visible individuals. Programming based on fear can be counter-productive by engendering discrimination through panic.States should require or encourage professional groups, particularly health-care professionals, and other private sector industries (e.g. law, insurance) to develop and enforce their own codes of conduct addressing human rights issues in the context of HIV. Relevant issues would include confidentiality, informed consent to testing, the duty to treat, the duty to ensure safe workplaces, reducing vulnerability and discrimination and practical remedies for breaches/misconduct.States should require that individual government departments devise clear guidelines on the extent to which their policies and practices reflect HIV-related human rights norms and their enforcement in formal legislation and regulations, at all levels of service delivery. Coordination of these standards should occur in the national framework described in Guideline 1 and be publicly available, after involvement of community and professional groups in
the process.States should collect information on human rights and HIV and, using this information as a basis for policy and programme development and reform, report on HIV-related human rights issues to the relevant United Nationstreaty bodies as part of their reporting obligations under human rights treaties.
(b) States should establish HIV focal points in relevant government branches, including national AIDS programmes, police and correctional departments, the judiciary, Government health and social service providers and the military, for monitoring HIV-related human rights abuses and facilitating access to these branches for disadvantaged and vulnerable groups. Performance indicators or benchmarks showing specific compliance with human rights standards should be developed for relevant policies and programmes.
(c) States should provide political, material and human resources support to ASOs and CBOs for capacity-building in human rights standards development and monitoring. States should provide human rights NGOs with support for capacity-building in HIV-related human rights standards and monitoring.
(d) States should support the creation of independent national institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights, including HIV-related rights, such as human rights commissions and ombudspersons and/or appoint HIV ombudspersons to existing or independent human rights agencies, national legal bodies and law reform commissions.
(e) States should promote HIV-related human rights in international forums and ensure that they are integrated into the policies and programmes of international organizations, including United Nations human rights bodies, as well as in other agencies of the United Nations system.
UNAIDS OHCHR

Furthermore, States should provide intergovernmental organizations with the material and human resources required to work effectively in this field.
Standard-setting and promotion of HIV-related human rights standards alone are insufficient to address human rights abuses in the context of HIV. Effective mechanisms must be established at the national and community levels to monitor and enforce HIV-related human rights. Governments should see this as part of their national responsibility to address HIV. The existence of monitoring mechanisms should be publicized, particularly among networks of people living with HIV, in order to maximize their use and impact. Monitoring is necessary to collect information, formulate and revise policy, and establish priorities for change and benchmarks for performance measurement. Monitoring should be both positive and negative, i.e. reporting on good practice to provide models for others to emulate, as well as identifying abuses. The non-governmental sector can provide an important means of monitoring human rights abuses, if resourced to do so, since it frequently has closer contact with the affected communities. Formal grievance bodies may be too bureaucratic and their procedures too time-consuming and stressful to attract a representative sample of complaints. Training is necessary for community participants to develop skills so as to be able to analyse and report findings at a level of quality which is credible for States and international human rights bodies.