Alliance India’s policy message

[Guest guest]

Alliance India's policy messages

" …in many countries, HIV response grants are being diverted to health

systems strengthening. While public health systems must be strong and

responsive, resources for HIV should not be cut to fund this " .

Alliance India takes its policy messages to UN high-level meeting

29 July 2008

Today's leaders must be bold enough to show that every human being

matters and not discriminate between " deserving " and " undeserving "

people living with HIV. This was the message from Alliance India's

Sonal Mehta at the 2008 UN high-level meeting on AIDS in New York in

June.

Sonal, Alliance India's director of policy and communications, spoke

as the civil society representative on the panel discussion, The

challenges of providing leadership and political support in countries

with concentrated epidemics. She explained how key populations living

with HIV face " triple stigma " because of living with HIV; because of

being, for example, a sex worker, a prisoner, or a drug user; and

because of their involvement or association with illegal activities.

She appealed to leaders to look at these groups as citizens and to

support them to enjoy their civil rights to ensure longer-term health

and wellbeing. Money spent on human rights, she argued, is money

spent on human development.

Sonal also highlighted how, in many countries, HIV response grants

are being diverted to health systems strengthening. While public

health systems must be strong and responsive, resources for HIV

should not be cut to fund this.

The contribution of the AIDS response to the health sector also needs

to be documented and acknowledged. Because of the response, she

argued, many countries have started questioning the laws that keep

drug users away from harm reduction strategies and that criminalize

sex work and same-sex behaviour. Community mobilisation is equally

important in setting up state-of-the-art service centres, she said.

Alliance members from Brazil, Mexico, Ukraine and the UK joined Sonal

at the meeting, where the Alliance held a well-attended side event on

meeting targets for marginalised communities.

For Alliance India, the high-level meeting was an opportunity to

profile its policy work, as well as to get a better understanding of

international priorities and how they influence local level work.

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