Latest estimates from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) show that the world continues to close in on the goal of ending the AIDS epidemic by stopping HIV transmission and halting AIDS-related deaths. Remarkable progress has been made over the last decade—yet significant challenges remain.
The guide prepared by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), an international organisation of Parliaments, is intended as a practical tool for parliamentarians who wish to organize themselves into cross-party groups and step up to the challenge that HIV presents. It is also designed for the civil society organizations that wish to work with them.
The guidelines provide recommendations and expert suggestions – mainly for policy-makers and national programme managers – on prioritizing, planning and providing HIV testing, counselling and care services for adolescents. Claimed as the “first to address the specific needs of adolescents both for those living with HIV as well as those who are at risk of infection.”
Narrates how low and middle-income countries have responded to HIV and AIDS in the first and second decades of a child’s life. Several national governments have made remarkable progress on mother-to-child transmission, yet lagged where adolescent protection is concerned.
The report assesses criminal laws, laws in relation to age, laws on health and HIV, law enforcement practices, and national policies relating to HIV, SRH and youth.
Examines existing constitutional provisions and legal means in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Nepal to provide protection, and redress for violations of rights at health care facilities; and also provide general and country-specific recommendations.