By Brendan Sweeney
Aart Hendricks, who is currently Professor of Health Law at Leiden University Law School in the Netherlands, was the keynote speaker at a seminar held at the Danish Institute for Human Rights on 25 February on the role of public health and human rights in tackling HIV/AIDS on a global basis.
Professor Hendricks described the historical background of official reactions to HIV/AIDS from the 1980s to the present and provided a critical assessment of developments within the field of public health and human rights with regard to HIV/AIDS during this period.
Initially, he said, the pandemic raised a host of new human rights problems relating to entrance restrictions, isolation, mass screening, confidentiality, and issues of discrimination, which were new to human rights lawyers.
It was also during the 1980s that some public health professionals started to discover the importance of human rights as a means to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic and its underlying conditions and to guarantee good care to individuals who had contracted the virus.
Professor Hendricks said these initiatives were not always welcomed at the time and that while human rights lawyers met with resistance from the law enforcement sector and the insurance sector, public health professionals experienced difficulties with groups such as care providers and other patients.
1990s and 2000s
The 1990s saw closer collaboration between human rights lawyers and public health officials, the emergence of new regional and international legal instruments and an increased focus on empowerment which boosted the individuality and autonomy of people with HIV/AIDS, he said. The decade was also marked by an increasing recognition of the rights of homosexuals, and the decriminalization of sex work and drug use in some countries.
In the 2000s meanwhile there was a gradual recognition of the right to health and the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of one’s health status. There was also a revision of international health regulations and a greater emphasis on patients’ rights as well as on empowerment of the individual, he continued.
Present Day
Professor Hendricks said that although there are many public health threats that could benefit from a human rights approach we still lack ‘hard evidence’ to prove the effectiveness of the human rights approach.
The public health and human rights issues associated with HIV/AIDS are too complex to be dealt with by individual states but by supporting the autonomy of patients, insisting on informed consent and by placing more emphasis on solidarity, protection and good health care, these problems can be tackled, he concluded.
For further information, please contact Brendan Sweeney at
