2022 OHCHR Annual Report on Human Rights and HIV/AIDS

50th Ses­sion HRC
10 May 2022

Report A-HRC-50-53

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Analysis of precedential value

This report was authored by the United Nations High Com­mis­sioner for Human Rights, who reports directly to the UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­eral–head of the UN sys­tem–and leads the Office of the High Com­mis­sioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), a body within the UN Sec­re­tariat. High Com­mis­sion­ers are human rights experts with man­dates to report and advise on human rights from a the­matic or coun­try-spe­cific per­spec­tive. The sit­ting High Com­mis­sioner for Human Rights at the time of this report’s release was Michelle Bachelet (Chile).

This report was sub­mit­ted to the Human Rights Coun­cil, which is com­posed of elected rep­re­sen­ta­tives from 47 Mem­ber States; together, they are respon­si­ble for coor­di­nat­ing inves­ti­ga­tions of and responses to human rights vio­la­tions.

Used as precedent

gender equality, human rights

• “Rec­om­mend that States that have not yet con­ducted an assess­ment of the extent to which exist­ing legal and pol­icy frame­works com­ply with the human rights norms and gen­der equal­ity norms applic­a­ble to the HIV response, and of their com­mit­ments under the Polit­i­cal Dec­la­ra­tion, do so through a process involv­ing the mean­ing­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion of stake­hold­ers, includ­ing key pop­u­la­tions, women and girls and young peo­ple.” (para­graph 15 (a))

negative legal determinants

• “Rec­om­mend that States repeal, rescind or amend laws and poli­cies that cre­ate bar­ri­ers or restrict access to health ser­vices or that dis­crim­i­nate, explic­itly or in effect, against peo­ple liv­ing with HIV, par­tic­u­larly key pop­u­la­tions, women, girls and youth.” (para­graph 15(b))

key population and community leadership

• “Rec­om­mend that States ensure that the devel­op­ment, imple­men­ta­tion and mon­i­tor­ing of all legal and pol­icy changes and pro­gram­matic inter­ven­tions are under­taken with the mean­ing­ful engage­ment and lead­er­ship of com­mu­nity-led orga­ni­za­tions.” (para­graph 15(c))

• “Rec­om­mend that as part of national bud­gets for HIV, States allo­cate and uti­lize resources for: Legal lit­er­acy pro­grammes for com­mu­ni­ties, key pop­u­la­tions and mar­gin­al­ized groups; and Fund­ing for com­mu­nity-led orga­ni­za­tions to sup­port and advo­cate for law reform.” (para­graph 15(d))

• “Rec­om­mend that for­mal par­tic­i­pa­tion struc­tures be made acces­si­ble to and inclu­sive of indi­vid­u­als and groups that are crim­i­nal­ized, mar­gin­al­ized or dis­crim­i­nated against, includ­ing key pop­u­la­tions, women and girls and young peo­ple. Spe­cific per­ma­nent mech­a­nisms for the par­tic­i­pa­tion of groups that have been his­tor­i­cally excluded, or whose views and needs have been inad­e­quately addressed in deci­sion-mak­ing processes, should be devel­oped.” (para­graph 41(b))

• “Rec­om­mend that finan­cial, human and other resources be allo­cated, on a sus­tain­able basis, to build the capac­ity of rights hold­ers to par­tic­i­pate and to claim their rights through edu­ca­tion, aware­ness-rais­ing, access to free legal aid and other sup­port, and to facil­i­tate reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion between rights hold­ers and duty bear­ers at the com­mu­nity, local and national lev­els.” (para­graph 41(d))

human rights, key population and community leadership, stigma and discrimination

• “Rec­om­mend that vio­lence, abuse and dis­crim­i­na­tion against peo­ple from key pop­u­la­tions be mon­i­tored, reported and addressed with a view to pre­ven­tion and redress, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with key pop­u­la­tion-led orga­ni­za­tions; this includes pro­vid­ing HIV-sen­si­tive, read­ily avail­able, afford­able judi­cial, quasi-judi­cial and other mech­a­nisms toad­dress HIV-related human rights vio­la­tions. Bar­ri­ers such as cost, lack of legal lit­er­acy or legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion should be elim­i­nated.” (para­graph 15(e))

harm reduction

• “Rec­om­mend that States end the prac­tice of com­pul­sory drug deten­tion and drug treat­ment; repeal all manda­tory min­i­mum prison sen­tences for drug offences; ensure access to essen­tial ser­vices for peo­ple who use drugs, includ­ing vol­un­tary refer­rals to health, social, harm reduc­tion and treat­ment ser­vices that are grounded in evi­dence, human rights and gen­der sen­si­tiv­ity; apply a mora­to­rium on admis­sions to com­pul­sory drug deten­tion cen­tres and pri­vate treat­ment cen­tres; and imme­di­ately release per­sons con­fined against their will in pri­vate or pub­lic drug treat­ment facil­i­ties.” (para­graph 15(f))

• “Rec­om­mend that States imple­ment, main­tain and scale up non-dis­crim­i­na­tory health and harm reduc­tion mea­sures in pris­ons, in accor­dance with best prac­tices in pub­lic health and pro­fes­sion­ally accepted stan­dards, and in con­sul­ta­tion with detainee groups and com­mu­nity health orga­ni­za­tions, to ensure oper­a­tional suc­cess, tak­ing into account the need for cul­tur­ally appro­pri­ate and gen­der-spe­cific pro­grammes.” (para­graph 15(g))

stigma and discrimination

• “Rec­om­mend that plans and strate­gies specif­i­cally address mul­ti­ple and inter­sect­ing forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion; inter­ven­tions should be grounded in an inter­sec­tional approach, tak­ing into account the effect of stigma and dis­crim­i­na­tion on par­tic­i­pants’ iden­ti­ties, and draw in com­mu­nity lead­ers from a vari­ety of back­grounds, with a view to improv­ing the abil­ity of peo­ple to cope with inter­sec­tional dis­crim­i­na­tion and to reduce inter­nal­ized stigma.” (para­graph 23(b))

gender equality

• “Rec­om­mend that States develop national strate­gies and plans to address dis­crim­i­na­tion against women and girls in all their diver­sity in their access to health ser­vices, includ­ing sex­ual and repro­duc­tive health ser­vices; these should be imple­mented in tan­dem with strate­gies to pro­tect women and girls from gen­der-based vio­lence, tak­ing into account its inter­link­ages with HIV/AIDS, and all strate­gies and plans should be devel­oped in con­sul­ta­tion with women-led orga­ni­za­tions and women and girls liv­ing with HIV, and be fully funded.” (para­graph 29(a))

• “Rec­om­mend that States increase invest­ments into inno­v­a­tive data col­lec­tion method­olo­gies to inform pol­icy and action on gen­der-based vio­lence; access to effec­tive and vic­tim-cen­tred reme­dies for gen­der-based vio­lence should be made read­ily avail­able and account­abil­ity for per­pe­tra­tors enforced.” (para­graph 29(c))

gender norms and stereotypes

• “Rec­om­mend that states Upscal­ing of actions to tackle unequal gen­der power dynam­ics, norms and prac­tices, includ­ing increased invest­ments into gen­der-trans­for­ma­tive, com­mu­nity-led inter­ven­tions, espe­cially those shown to reduce both HIV and vio­lence against women and girls, be pri­ori­tised” (para­graph 29(v))

comprehensive sexuality education

• “Rec­om­mend that States ensure that com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al­ity edu­ca­tion pro­grammes are age-appro­pri­ate, evi­dence-based and sci­en­tif­i­cally accu­rate at all lev­els of edu­ca­tion, includ­ing com­pre­hen­sive infor­ma­tion on sex­ual and repro­duc­tive health and rights, respon­si­ble sex­ual behav­iour, pre­ven­tion of early preg­nancy and sex­u­ally trans­mit­ted dis­eases, includ­ing HIV” (para­graph 29(d))

human rights

• “Rec­om­mend that States Imple­ment exist­ing tech­ni­cal and other guid­ance on imple­ment­ing a human rights-based approach to HIV/AIDS, includ­ing the Inter­na­tional Guide­lines on Human Rights and Drug Pol­icy, the Inter­na­tional Guide­lines on HIV and Human Rights and the report and sup­ple­ment of the Global Com­mis­sion on HIV and the Law.” (para­graph 35(c))

societal enablers

• “Rec­om­mend that States allo­cate and ring-fence bud­getary resources for soci­etal enablers, includ­ing stigma and dis­crim­i­na­tion reduc­tion, the elim­i­na­tion of gen­der-based vio­lence, reduc­ing gen­der inequal­i­ties and harm­ful gen­der norms, increas­ing access to jus­tice and action to sup­port law reform.” (para­graph 54(a))

key population and community leadership, societal enablers

• “Rec­om­mend that States allo­cate funds to com­mu­nity-led and com­mu­nity-based orga­ni­za­tions to lead on activ­i­ties to imple­ment soci­etal enablers, par­tic­u­larly those tar­get­ing key and vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions.” (para­graph 54(c))