The International AIDS Congress in Indonesia Tuesday hailed the Delhi High Court ruling decriminalising gay sex while advocating that countries must facilitate an “enabling legal environment and human rights based HIV policies and programmes” for homosexuals and transgenders.
This pat came at a high-level symposium - Overcoming Legal Barriers to Comprehensive Prevention Among Men who have Sex with Men and Transgender People in Asia and the Pacific - as part of the International Congress on AIDS at Bali, Indonesia, and co-hosted by the UNDP.
"In order to achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support and realise the Millennium Development Goals, we must facilitate an enabling legal environment and human rights based HIV policies and programmes for MSM (male having sex with male) and transgenders," said Jeffrey O'Malley, global director of UNDP's HIV Group in the conference.
"This very debate was at the heart of the recent landmark ruling by the Delhi High Court that Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code unfairly discriminates against MSM and consenting adults in general," the UNDP noted in a statement from Bali.
Minister of State for Health Dinesh Trivedi leads the Indian delegation at the Aug 9-13 event. India is home to at least 2.3 millions homosexuals.
Speakers discussed how effective and comprehensive HIV prevention among MSM and transgender (TG) people can occur only when a conducive and enabling legal environment is created, the statement said.
"The Delhi High Court ruling is a shining example of such an approach, where education and sensitisation of these different sectors was central to the success of the case," said Shivananda Khan, another senior official at the AIDS congress.
Over 90 percent of MSM in Asia Pacific, including India, do not have access to HIV prevention and care, and if interventions are not urgently intensified the spread of the disease among this section will escalate sharply, the UN agency said.
"Moreover, legal frameworks across the region need a dramatic and urgent overhaul to allow public health sectors to reach out to MSM, or the public health consequences could be dire. This will mean stepping up our investment in legal and social programmes which effectively address stigma and discrimination directed at MSM and TG,” the UN body said.
A 2006 survey of the coverage of HIV interventions in 15 Asia Pacific countries estimated that targeted prevention programmes reached less than 10 percent of MSM and TG, far short of the 80 percent coverage that epidemiological models indicate is needed to control the HIV epidemic.
Currently 20 countries in the Asia Pacific region cosider gay sex criminal, and these laws often taken on the force of vigilantism, leading to abuse and human rights violations.
Even in the absence of criminalisation, other provisions of law violate the rights of these groups along with arbitrary and inappropriate enforcement, thereby obstructing HIV interventions, advocacy and outreach, and service delivery.
According to Anand Grover, director of the Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS Unit in India and UN special rapporteur on the Right to Health, "there have been a number of success stories in the region which give us hope. Courts in Nepal, India and Pakistan have been instrumental in recognising and upholding the rights of sexual minorities.
"This means that they will no longer be considered criminals in accessing life-saving prevention, care and treatment services. We hope that other countries in the Asia-Pacific region and across the globe will follow suit."