People living with HIV or AIDS can suffer various injustices. Fear and ignorance can lead to families sending away people they think may have HIV. The wives of men with HIV are often treated badly. Children may be forced to leave school.
Women who suffer domestic violence or who have no power to choose when they have sexual relations are particularly at risk of infection with HIV. They are often too ashamed or fearful to seek legal protection.
Some organisations or employers may ignore people’s human rights. They may force employees to be tested and dismiss everyone found to have HIV. This is not legal, though it is often done. There is little or no risk of passing on HIV in a work situation and people may have many years of productive work ahead of them.
Traditional inheritance laws may mean that widows and their children lose all their land, property and sometimes their home when a man dies. They are left in poverty and without hope at a time of mourning. It is possible to prepare a will before death to prevent this happening.
Discussion
- What sort of attitudes cause children to be sent away from school because of concerns about their parent’s health?
- What can be done to enable such children to continue their education? Do we know people who have lost their work because other people think that they may have HIV?
- Do we know of situations where people have been asked to have a blood test without knowing they were being tested for HIV? What happened in these situations? Are there laws to protect employees who have HIV from losing their work?
- How can we support people living with HIV who want to continue working?
- What action could leaders take to challenge these injustices?
- What traditional laws does our culture have about inheritance? Are some of these unhelpful? How could they be challenged? Would preparing a will help to prevent injustice?
- In some countries it is illegal for someone who knows they have HIV to knowingly infect others. Can anything more be done to prevent this happening?
- How can we work together to draw attention to issues of injustice towards people living with HIV? How can we encourage radio, TV and newspapers to include articles about these problems?
- How can we use the law to challenge employers and other organisations to change unfair treatment of people living with HIV?
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