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Realizing the right to health for children living with HIV

Parallel event on pediatric HIV at the 22nd Session of the Human Rights Council

As preparations were being made for the holding of the 22nd Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, organizations concerned with the situation for children living with HIV were monitoring the various mechanisms at the Council with a view to ensuring that the issue of prevention, treatment and care for children living with HIV is on the agenda as a human rights concern.

The 22nd regular session Human Rights Council that took place from 25 February to 22 March 2013, was an important one for children, particular as it relates to their right to health. Not only the High Commissioner for Human Rights delivered a study on the status of children’s health rights to the Council, the “Annual Day of Discussion on Children’s Rights” held at the Council focused on children’s health rights. This presented an opportunity for those concerned with HIV and children to ensure that a their concerns was heard and taken into account as decisions are made regarding furthering the respect for children’s health rights and actualizing those rights on the ground.

As such, Caritas Internationalis (CI), the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EAA) and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) felt that a useful contribution could be a parallel event looking at the issue of pediatric HIV from a human rights perspective, focusing on the need to prevent infection in the first place, but also treating and caring for those children already infected. The title of the parallel event is “Realizing the right to health for children living with HIV.”

Goals and objectives

Overall goal: to draw attention to the particular challenges facing children affected or infected by HIV in the context of a global discussion on children’s health rights.

Objectives:to sensitize governments and other international stakeholders to the needs of children when it comes to preventing and treating HIV/AIDS, the scale of the problem, and possible solutions/good practice;
to promote maternal health strategies that effectively prevent the transmission of the virus from an HIV-positive mother to her child and serve as an entry-point for mothers, children and their families to access other HIV services; to recommend steps that governments and other international stakeholders can take to promote and advance children’s right to health in the context of the HIV epidemic.