United States HIV Policy from the Human Rights Perspective

Abstract

HIV is not only a public health crisis, an economic crisis, and a social crisis; it is a human rights crisis. Yet in the United States, HIV has not been approached through a human rights perspective. In general, people with HIV or at risk for HIV have been treated as distrusted perpetrators, and access to needed services, information, and care have been selectively, not universally, available. Because the United States is globally influential in HIV funding and policies, our neglect and abuse of human rights have been exported. This paper uses the human rights lens to examine some of the ways in which the United States has traditionally approached the HIV pandemic and to critique those approaches, and suggests what HIV policy might be if universal human rights were considered.

KEYWORDS:

• AIDS
• HIV
• human rights
• policy

I thank the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service writing group for their feedback. I am grateful to Eric Sawyer [co-founder of ACT-UP/New York, founder of the HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Project, now with UNAIDS] for his fact-checking. I dedicate this article to the memory of my dear friend, colleague, and mentor, Bill Edens, Jr., who died uninsured while he was suing the state of South Carolina so that others living with HIV might live with insurance.