HIV/AIDS and human rights: A socio-legal challenge

Today HIV/AIDS has become one of the most devastating disease mankind has ever faced. Since the epidemic began, it has become one of the largest causes of death worldwide. HIV continues to spread through out the world, by increasing challenges to human rights, at both national and global levels. The virus continues to be marked by discrimination against population groups; those who live on the fringes of society or who are assumed to be at risk of infection because of behaviour, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, or social characteristics that are stigmatized in a particular society. Since HIV/AIDS is a problem that profoundly affects most aspects of people’s lives, it raises many social, economic and cultural issues that relate to human rights, ethics and law. HIV/AIDS therefore is a problem that does not respect national borders and there is evidence that unless prevention efforts are sustained, new epidemics of HIV can readily arise to threaten peace, human rights, security and survival. A new approach is required to halt and begin to reverse the epidemic.