Sex, politics, culture and religion HIV

Sex, politics, culture and religion
HIV challenged us to confront some of
our most deeply held assumptions about
sex, gender, sexuality and drug use. The
threat of infection and its consequences
has resulted in the adoption of practical
harm reduction measures i.e. to
minimize the harm from activities that
many people believe are wrong.
Religious beliefs and attitudes and
traditional cultural norms have been a
constant feature of debates and
discussions surrounding how to
respond to HIV. Religion has had both
positive and negative influences in the
AIDS response.
Faith based organizations are critical
providers of home care in many
countries and religious leaders have
played important roles in challenging the
exclusion of people living with HIV.
However, some churches, mosques and
temples and the teachers associated
with them have reinforced stigma. These
starkly different approaches to the fight
against AIDS, one of which is vital to
success and one which erodes the
most modest gains can also come from
the same religious traditions and even
the same congregations.
Religion can be helpful. In Cambodia,
the International HIV/AIDS Alliance
supports local Buddhist organizations to
undertake HIV work, which not only
includes the provision of home-based
care to people living with HIV but also
makes use of Buddhist monks in
normalizing HIV and challenging
stigma3 . Such work, and similar work
undertaken by other faiths, needs to
be replicated so that the positive
contribution that religion can make to
fighting stigma is realized.
A world without stigma and
discrimination is possible
Despite increased funding, political
commitment and progress in expanding
access to HIV treatment and care, the
AIDS epidemic continues to outpace the
response. Increased leadership and
commitment is needed, not just in
funding or for increased access to
treatment, but in asserting the critical
importance of overcoming HIV-related
stigma and promoting human rights as
a prerequisite in the AIDS response.
Without a fundamental commitment to
stigma reduction and to human rights
there is a risk of entrenching the very
inequalities that are driving the epidemic
and which increase the impact of HIV.
Reducing HIV-related stigma requires:
􀂄 openness in facing up to the
epidemic;
􀂄 active commitment to the greater
involvement of people living with HIV
in all aspects of the HIV response
locally, nationally, regionally and
internationally;
􀂄 persistent and public engagement
on HIV in general and as a human
rights issue in particular; and
􀂄 policies, programmes and laws that
protect, promote and fulfil the rights
of people in general, and the poor
and vulnerable in particular.
Where human rights are at risk, people
are at risk of HIV. And where people are
living with or affected by HIV their human
rights are in need of protection. Stigma
is the prevailing context in which that
risk of HIV infection occurs and in which
people’s rights are made vulnerable
to abuse. By putting the rights of
vulnerable groups and communities,
together with the rights and interests of
people living with HIV at the centre of
the AIDS response we can help reduce
stigma. This will both reduce vulnerability
and mitigate the impact of AIDS.