Securitising HIV/AIDS in Tajikistan: Framings, Policies and Practices

Abstract

Building on previous work on the securitisation of HIV/AIDS, studies of framings, and the Copenhagen and Paris schools of security studies, this essay explores how policy framings of HIV/AIDS have shifted from the late Soviet period through to present-day Tajikistan. Pointing to both continuity and change, it shows how, under the influence of international actors and in accordance with nation-building priorities, Soviet-era medical and societal security framings gradually transformed into state security, demography and family-oriented framings. It also examines the resulting policy responses and practices that influence the everyday life of social groups who become identified as a public health concern.

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to our interviewees for sharing with us their personal and professional trajectories and discussing the transformation of the HIV/AIDS field in Tajikistan. We thank the University of Paris 13 (Université Sorbonne Paris Nord) that hosted the GLOBALCONTEST project for which this research was produced. We also thank the editors of this special issue, Philipp Lottholz and Thorsten Bonacker, for inviting us to the workshop ‘Peace, Order and Securitisation in post-Imperial Central Asia' at the Philipps-University of Marburg in January 2019 and for guidance on writing this essay. Finally, we thank two anonymous reviewers for comments and useful suggestions, which helped us improve this work. Research for this essay was supported by: ‘GLOBALCONTEST: Contested Global Governance, Transformed Global Governors? International Organisations and “Weak” States' (French National Research Agency, grant number ANR-16-ACHN-0034); Collaborative Research Center SFB/TRR 138 ‘Dynamics of Security’ (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, grant number 227068724); Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) (grant number 12B9422N); Tomsk State University (grant number 8.1.27.2018).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For extended discussions, see McInnes (2015), Nunes (2015).

2 For an extended discussion of this shift, as exemplified by activities of the World Bank see, Harman (2010).

3 For example, Jackson (2005).

4 One needs to be careful with interpreting these statistics. Higher prevalence among a particular ‘key population’ might not necessarily mean that there is a substantially higher number of HIV cases within this group, compared to the world average, but that the statistics are not accurate due to various locally specific factors. Similarly, a growing prevalence among the general population over the years might also be a function of wider and better diagnostics and, thus, better accounting for HIV-positive individuals in the gathered data.

5 For a similar account on gender blindness in the case of Ebola, see Harman (2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karolina Kluczewska

Karolina Kluczewska, Ghent Institute for International and European Studies, Ghent University, Belgium; Laboratory for Social and Anthropological Research, Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russian Federation.Email: [email protected]

Oleg Korneev

Oleg Korneev, Department of Political Science and International Relations, National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University), St Petersburg, Russian Federation. Email: [email protected]