[check against delivery]

Program Director,

Honorable judges and justices,

My UNDP colleagues from the Regional Service Center led by Amitrajit Saha,

Team Leader, HIV, Health and Development Team for Africa, Eastern Europe and Arab States

Distinguished guests

Ladies and gentlemen,

All protocols observed

1.0         On behalf of UNDP, it is my pleasure to be here and to welcome you to this 5^th Meeting of the Africa Regional judges forum.

2.0         I hope that you have travelled well and that you have two days of successful deliberations and are also able to enjoy some World Cup action!

3.0     It is an honor for me personally to have been part of the journey of this Africa Regional Judges’ Forum since it was launched here in Johannesburg in 2014 where I have participated in all of its meetings. It is also gratifying to see the consistency and evolution of this initiative. It has held annual meetings with participation from an increasing number of judges from Africa: the last meeting of the Forum, held in 2017 was attended by 32 judges from 17 countries, including a judge from Tunisia (North Africa), and from the Ukraine (Eastern Europe) – making the Judges’ Forum a truly cross-regional forum for the first time. I understand there are also participants from Asia in this particular meeting. This no doubt provides an opportunity to further extend the frontiers of cross regional collaboration.

4.0    We will recall that this journey started as an implementation response to the    findings and recommendations of the 2012 report of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law titled “HIV and the Law: Risks, Rights & Health”, that highlighted exclusion, stigma and discrimination and their role in fuelling the HIV and TB epidemics globally as well as concluded that ending AIDS as a public health threat was within reach but only if science and action were accompanied by respect for human dignity and efforts to end injustice.

5.0         That same report in fact highlighted key recommendations on how to ‘change the game’: and one recommendation from the Commission’s report discussed the importance of ‘engaging with and sensitising judiciaries’ on this issue. This then, is why UNDP has considered it very important to continue to support this forum as an important platform to identify and discuss the various ways that people living with and at risk of HIV and TB are denied their entitlements to treatment and care, and the role judges can play, in mitigating some of the circumstances they face as a result of legal, social and cultural systems that exist in most of our countries.

6.0         This brings us to the question, who then are these people/groups who are most likely to be, or are affected by HIV and TB, whose inability to realise their rights places them at heightened risk and who are also unable to access the services they need due to stigma, discrimination, criminalisation and exclusion? As we know from our interactions, these groups, according to UNAIDS reports, include people living with HIV and other key populations such as men who have sex with men, sex workers, transgender people, people who use drugs and prisoners: all of whom bear a disproportionate burden of HIV. The UNAIDS Prevention Gap Report shows that more than 20% of new infections were among key populations and their sexual partners in East and Southern Africa. More than 80% of new HIV infections in central Asia, Europe, North America, the Middle East and North Africa in 2017 were among people from these key populations and their sexual partners. The same is also true for young people and adolescents. Young women and adolescent girls are particularly vulnerable to HIV infection, especially between the ages of 15-24 years old. Women and girls account for more than half [59%] of the total number of people living with HIV in eastern and southern Africa.  In South Africa, the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS, 2016) reveals that young women in this same age group are eight times more likely to be HIV positive than their male counterparts.

7.0         Still on the issue of young women and adolescent girls, we see that the key drivers of their vulnerability continue to be legal, social, economic and cultural issues: harmful gender norms including those relating to child marriage, inequalities such as poverty, food insecurity, limited autonomy and decision-making power within their relationships, as well as violence, including physical and sexual violence. For example, despite 15 of 19 countries in East and Southern Africa having laws against intimate partner violence and sexual offences, more than 30% of ever married or partnered women (aged 15–24 years) experienced physical or sexual violence from a male intimate partner in the previous 12 months in Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. This figure was 50% among girls aged 15 to 19 years in Namibia. Conflicts between laws – such as customary and civil laws relating to marriage, property ownership, inheritance, as well as legal and human rights obstacles to education and sexual and reproductive health services including discriminatory attitudes towards young peoples’ sexuality and archaic and often contradictory age-of-consent laws further limit access to medical services.

8.0    Does this then mean that nothing has changed for the better? No. We see significant declines in new HIV infections especially in Africa which is directly contributing to the achievement of SDG 3 and more specifically its Target 3.3: which aims to, by 2030, end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases and other communicable diseases.

9.0 The steepest declines in new HIV infections recorded between 2010 and 2016, were achieved in eastern and southern Africa with a 29% decline in new HIV infections; 9% decline in western and central Africa and 4% decline in the Middle East and North Africa. We see significant advances in access to treatment for people with HIV and TB, and a number of countries recognising the importance of programming for key populations.  In South Africa, the total number of people on antiretroviral therapy is 4.2 million as of December 2017, one of the world’s largest ARV programmes, which has resulted in a sharp increase in national life expectancy from 58.3 years in 2011 to 65 years in 2017. This is a remarkable achievement.

10.0      Importantly for us seated here, we see examples of progressive judgements in countries across the region protecting the rights of people living with HIV and TB as patients, as mothers caring for and breastfeeding their children, as workers entitled to employee rights, as prisoners entitled to treatment and care and as equal citizens of their countries entitled to treatment. We see examples of judges protecting the rights of sex workers and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons from harassment, police abuse and unlawful arrest, protecting LGBTI persons’ rights to health care and protecting the rights of their organisations to register, meet and provide support. It is these judgements that are critical to paving the way for all populations to access life-saving health care and other services without fear of degrading treatment, denial of care, harassment, violence and arrest.  

11.0      We at this Forum understand that to effectively address the HIV and TB epidemics, there is an urgent need to end stigma, discrimination and exclusion. That requires significantly increased investments in strengthening enabling legal and regulatory frameworks and removing human rights and gender-related barriers, including through law and policy reform and ongoing work with the judiciary.

12.0      The challenge for the judiciary in supporting rights-based responses to the HIV and TB epidemics in Africa include responding to complex legal and human rights’ issues: overturning legislation that either does not address, or actively curtails the human rights of people most at risk of and most affected by HIV and TB; challenging the policies and practices of governments, organisations and individuals that discriminate against key populations and clarifying the health and human rights of all people. UNDP recognises the importance of supporting members of the judiciary in this role, to support enhanced access to services for key and vulnerable populations towards ending AIDS and TB by 2030.

13.0      We have no doubt that we are on the right trajectory based on our experience over the last 6 years – since the launching of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law’s report in July 2012 and the convening of the Africa Regional Judges Forum. Despite significant challenges and in the face of increased efforts to undermine human rights of key populations in some countries, there have been some extraordinary advances in rights-based jurisprudence in the context of HIV and TB in our part of the world. The impact and achievements of the Africa Regional Judges’ Forum are being noticed and cited in regional and international fora relating to HIV, TB and human rights and the efforts and commitment of all those present has been key to these achievements. For those attending the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam in July, we hope you will use this opportunity to showcase the important work of the judiciary in our region to protect and promote rights in the context of HIV, TB and the development of all people, as will we at UNDP.

14.0      Lastly and particularly pleasing is the recent, ongoing efforts to institutionalize HIV, TB and human rights in the curricula of national judicial institutes in Africa. This ground-breaking initiative, an off-shoot of the work of the Forum, will help to expand and sustain the important gains made by the Africa Regional Judges’ Forum and today’s meeting will provide an opportunity to further discuss and take forward this exciting initiative. I was also pleased to witness the launch of this judicial institutes initiative in March and as a South Africa Country Office we are proud to have partnered and taken our collaboration with SAJEI one step further by organizing a 3- day training session on transformational leadership, also in response to HIV/AIDS.

15.0      Once again, I welcome you and hope that you a successful and fruitful meeting.

16.0      Thank you

References:

1.    Mandeep Dhaliwal. Huff Post Op Ed (8 Jun. 2016). “20 Million People Living with HIV Are Being Left Behind”. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mandeep-dhaliwal/20-million-people-living-_b_10343224.html?1465403600

2.    UNAIDS 2016. Global AIDS Update. http://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/media_asset/global-AIDS-update-2016_en.pdf

3.    Ban Ki Moon (April 2016). “On the fast track to ending the AIDS epidemic”. SG Report UN GA (A/70/811). http://sgreport.unaids.org/pdf/20160423_SGreport_HLM_en.pdf

4.    World Health Organization. Global Tuberculosis Report 2017. WHO; 2017

5.    Source: UNAIDS special analysis, 2017

6.    https://www.avert.org/professionals/social-issues/gender-inequality