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In 2010 the very first human rights march at an international AIDS
conference took place on a Tuesday evening in July. It was July 20 in Vienna
Austria.
And we marched along the Ringstrasse, which is a very historic part of Vienna.
There were tens of thousands of people who showed up from
all over the world.
I remember seeing African nuns
marching next to a
gay couple from Argentina, marching next to Russian drug users, and thinking
what is it that is tying these people together?
And I think it's the idea of human rights.
--I never imagined to have
Not just the number of people, but the quality of participation.
It look like everybody just turned out and said, this is important.
We came out here tonight to
march in support of human rights
to those living with ***/AIDS.
Very simply human rights are key. If we don't have human rights, nothing matters. In my country, people who are living with
addiction have,
have hardly any rights at all, and certainly they're considered the most terrible people
in our country, and I live in Canada for god's sake, it's wrong.
I remember
leading the march, and
walking
under the arch
through the gates of Heldenplatz,
and saw thousands of people congregating on behalf of the
most marginalize people affected by ***
in the world.
This is what it takes to end the epidemic.
We need the urgency, and the power, and the emotion and the energy of the people
living with ***,
fighting against
the racism and the stigma and the homophobia and the sexism that
allows the epidemic to persist.
It's not enough to respond to ***
just with medical interventions, and after all the science is done,
and the labs are closed,
and the pills are manufactured,
you've got
society to deal with.
And that virus is
just as smart at
exploiting social weakness
as it is
at exploiting
the weaknesses
of the immune system.
We must realize that universal access
to *** prevention treatment, care and support will never be achieved without
human rights.
There is no way you're going to ensure that you prevent new infections if people
cannot even access those prevention services.
If people are criminalized, they cannot come out to access services. So you can't do
prevention.
So, we must treat people like human beings, not like fugitives.
And that's why we say if you do not have that, there's
no way you can achieve universal access.
We want
human rights now, than ever.
Rights, especially rights for women should be recognized as rights for all humans.
In my part of the world,
over 60 percent of infections
are in women and girls.
And so you've got women who have
no voice and no rights.
Where you cannot tell your man
if and when and how to have sex. Where, if you live in the context where
you know that you are not even the only woman here,
and in my particular case, me being faithful did not prevent me from having ***.
So you're saying, how then do you address the issues of women? What about violence against
women? You dare not go back home and tell your husband, or your partner, or whoever you are with
to say I've got ***. Because you can lose your home.
Also the rights and the needs of children and young people
are mainly ignored in our response to ***.
Yes they're the most at risk in most countries.
And more broadly now, we don't have youth-friendly services.
Services that
address a young personally holistically.
A 15 year-old girl cannot access treatment where I access as a
40 year old, because that child in that setting is completely disempowered.
The populations who are most affected by ***
are among the most stigmatized, the most marginalized, the most discriminated
against in society. It is the woman
who is supposed to be taking antiretroviral medications
in a violent marriage.
Is the drug user who is supposed to be using the needle exchange program
constantly arrested and sent to prison.
And I think about
sex workers in Asia
who are afraid to carry condoms with them when they go to work because they
think the police will confiscate their condoms from them.
This shows that it's not enough to provide medicine, to provide prevention
tools, to provide commodities, to provide health services. *** makes us ask
questions about the kind of society that we live in.
I remember at one point in the march I found myself marching next to a group of Chinese activists.
They practically had tears in their eyes.
And they said to me,
we couldn't do this in China.
We couldn't march. We'd be arrested.
That march
was full of people
who could not
lawfully do at home
what they were doing
in Vienna. --I come here as an activists because I'm fighting for LGBTI
rights in Uganda, in Africa. And I'm proud that
we're expressing our voice for the voiceless.
I remember
meeting an *** doctor in Nairobi,
who was complaining to me once
that he had a lot of patients who were coming for anti-retroviral therapy,
and they were saying to him, you know it's very hard for us to take our pills
at home because our husbands don't know.
And if they found out, they'd
beat us up.
So what did we do?
We worked
with this doctor
to add lawyers to his medical team.
And these lawyers helped these women to get
protection orders from their violent husbands.
And lo and behold
they started adhering more regularly to their treatment regimens.
I think we're at a point in the epidemic that although we've poured billions of
dollars into it,
it's still not enough.
And one thing that we're demanding
is more funding for a very specific set of programs
that complement medical interventions.
And these programs include things like
legal aid services, reforming laws to make sure that they facilitate an
*** response.
And yet
a very small percentage of global AIDS funding
goes towards those kinds of programs.
I think the human rights idea
really resonated with people in 2010. And that's why tens of
thousands of people showed up in Vienna on July 20th.
People, what do we want? We want human rights for people with AIDS!
Human rights for IUD users! Human rights for sex workers! Human rights for women and girls! Human rights for men who have sex with men!
We will fight for our rights to get treatment. To live with our beloved ones.
To raise our kids. To love, and to
see new happy day. --It is our birth right to be treated
with respect!
It is our birth right to be treated with dignity! Human rights here! Human rights now!
We stand here tonight, united in solidarity with one voice.
One call to action.
We're speaking directly
to global leaders, to demand that
they keep their promises and commitments to global access to treatment,
prevention, and medical care.
The take-away of this event
is that human rights and *** is a movement.
And it's a global movement, and it's a diverse movement.
And what that means is that it will be
impossible
for anyone
to deny
that there is a mandate behind the idea that human rights must be at the center
of this response.