UN Rapporteur on Right to Health Meets with SRH Groups at IAC

A meeting of great importance for civil society took place outside the official venue for the 2008 AIDS Conference -- a dialogue with the newly-appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, Anand Grover. Ximena Andion, of the Center for Reproductive Rights, and Juliana Cano, of Human Rights Watch, organized the informal gathering so that community and NGO representatives could learn about Grover's background, hear his views on the linkages between sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and HIV, and express some of their concerns regarding sexual and reproductive health and rights violations.

Grover, co-founder of the Lawyers Collective in India, has made it a point to work closely with civil society in the legal and rights-based work he pursues. His career began with a case focused on the rights of homeless people and since then he has worked with community members in drafting Indian laws related to HIV and sexual violence. He is currently arguing a court case against the sodomy law in India.

Grover stressed that any work on human rights and health must be based on a combination of the "academic" and "real-life experience." Scientific evidence is needed to show which public-health interventions will have a real impact on the risks and vulnerabilities of various groups. At the same time, people from these communities must have a platform to share their own views and experiences regarding the factors that they feel place their health in jeopardy. We already have interventions developed in such a manner and these need to be promoted; examples include empowerment strategies among sex workers and needle-exchange programs for injecting drug users.

As the Special Rapporteur on Health, one of Grover's tasks will be to work on further refining the definition of the right to health as used in human rights law. In this regard, he will focus on a limited number of key issues that can be delineated more clearly. Although he was clear about already having some ideas about which issues he believes will be worth pursuing, he also wants input from civil society.

In order to gather as much input as possible in a short period of time, Grover will work with NGOs to hold a series of regional consultations for civil society organizations, including groups working on HIV/AIDS, women's issues, sexual orientation, human rights and health issues affecting marginalized groups. He hopes that these dialogues will lead to a growing consensus on issues requiring urgent attention.

The civil society representatives at the informal Mexico meeting took the opportunity to put forward their views on some of the issues that are of vital importance in their region. These include: addressing the issue of unsafe abortion and negation of safe legal abortion care by governments such as Nicaragua; homophobia by conservative and religious groups, which is obstructing health-related work for non-heterosexual people; and access of indigenous groups and young people to adequate health services.

These topics fit in well with Grover's expressed desire to address marginalization and empowerment as perspectives for the work of the Special Rapporteur. He will be setting up a webpage through which civil society groups can send him information and feedback in the very near future.