Features

Participants at Capital Woman 2008 sign ‘Destination Unknown’ campaign tools.

Universal access starts here!

Georgina Caswell introduces the ‘Destination Unknown’ campaign for HIV+ asylum seekers at risk.

f you’re working in the City and unsure about your commitment to your hedge fund career, then one session with a City life coach can set you back £150. Ouch (well, maybe not if you’re in hedge funds). See a Living Well life coach on the other hand, and you’ll contribute just £10 for each of the 12 one-to-one sessions. “This makes coaching much more accessible,” says Living Well project manager James Miller who introduced the service in 2004.

It has taken the House of Lords and the European Court of Human Rights 10 years to come to the decision that deporting an HIV positive woman to Uganda (Case of N. v. the United Kingdom), where she would not be able to access life-saving HIV treatment, does not amount to ‘inhuman and degrading treatment’ (Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights).

The decision to send a person back to a country where HIV treatment and other treatments are not available or accessible is likely to impact on other cases. Barbara, an HIV positive woman from Rwanda living in the UK and going through the asylum process, says, “I am so scared. At the moment, it’s like I’m on life support and if it is stopped, I’ll get other diseases. It is as though they have said, ‘We are sentencing you to death in Britain’. If I receive the same news, I might as well go into a coma now. It is very difficult to take”.

The African HIV Policy Network (AHPN)-led ‘Destination Unknown’ campaign calls on the Home Office to delay the deportation of people living with HIV until treatment becomes widely available and accessible worldwide. The AHPN feels that removing a person in these circumstances is inhumane. We argue that irrespective of their immigration status, people living with HIV have the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health under Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights - ICESCR.

People living with HIV and AIDS who come to the UK seeking asylum are legally entitled to HIV treatment. Many people are mothers and fathers with dependent families. Some have been persecuted in their country of origin. The UK undertakes to care for people in these circumstances. However, if their asylum claim fails, this compromises their eligibility to free HIV treatment, and their health will frequently deteriorate rapidly.

As one participant at an AHPN meeting with HIV activists in April stated, “What the government is saying is that whether you go and die, it is not our business.”

There is a clear contradiction between the UK’s policy aim of universal access to HIV treatment for all those who need it by 2010 and the deportation of people living with HIV who are on treatment to countries where treatment is not readily available or affordable.

The AHPN also believes that there is a moral obligation to continue to care for those with whom the state has established a relationship via treatment. Interrupting a person’s medical regime can lead to treatment complications in the future; a person’s health will ultimately deteriorate and they face a preventable death.
These arguments are supported by International Development Committee, which states, “We believe that DFID should play a role in ensuring that asylum seekers living with HIV are not returned to countries where access to ARVs is not practical.”

The AHPN has compiled a number of case studies, which illustrate that some HIV positive people who have been removed from the UK have not been able to access the medication that they require in their countries of origin. One such case is that of Ratidzai who was deported to Zimbabwe in April 2007. She has run out of medication and does not have the ruling party’s political card, which she needs to access healthcare in the government hospital in Harare.

Although circumstances vary from country to country and from case to case, Ratidzai’s current situation highlights why we need to support access to HIV treatment for migrants living with HIV.
We urge all PN readers to take part in the AHPN’s ‘Destination Unknown’ campaign to call for an end to removals to countries where HIV treatment is not easily available or accessible by visiting
www.ahpn.org/campaigns. PN