• In this section:
• Universal access
• Mainstreaming
• Orphans and vulnerable children
• Financing
• Civil society involvement
• HIV and SRHR
• Human rights

Human rights

HIV-related stigma and discrimination pose substantial barriers to achieving universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support. Discrimination, exclusion, (sexual) violence and denial of HIV treatment and prevention measures are some of the systematic processes that increase vulnerability to HIV and deny people with HIV their rights to health.

Prohibitive laws and policies also pose significant barriers to universal access and often undermine HIV prevention. For example, laws that prohibit sex between men or criminalize sex work and drug use, dramatically increase people’s vulnerability to HIV.

This underlines just how much HIV is a human rights, as well as a health, issue.

Stop AIDS Alliance argues that the protection of the rights of people living with HIV, or who are most vulnerable to it, must be placed on the EU development agenda, in particular the right to access HIV prevention, treatment, care and support.