Document Type

    Article

    Disciplines

    International Law

    Abstract

    While not the proximate cause of the University of Connecticut School of Law symposium in December 2001, that demonstration in Durban can explain why a discuss human rights and intellectual property rights in the context of the global AIDS crisis.

    It is important to understand that context before addressing the issues of conflicting bodies of law. The global AIDS epidemic is a health catastrophe of unprecedented proportions. While AIDS in an individual is caused by a virus, the epidemic (its rapid spread, pattern of growth, catastrophic consequences) must be seen as much an economic, social and political phenomenon as a medical one. The fact that the epidemic is a crisis that is killing millions, reversing whatever economic gains have been made since decolonization in some of the most affected countries, and threatening the social fabric of those countries, is an indictment of the governments and international organizations (International Monitary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, United Nations) that have controlled the direction of international development over the past two decades since HIV was recognized.

    The deepening and expanding nature of this crisis points to the profound failure of these international organizations to generate a response designed to save lives and relieve suffering. For the first fifteen years of the epidemic this was masked by the absence of any treatment or vaccine. As long as HIV prevention was the only approach to the epidemic, the spread of the epidemic could be portrayed as a global tragedy caused primarily by individuals' sexual risk behaviors. The systemic factors (poverty, social discrimination, human rights abuses) that determine vulnerability to HIV infection were ignored or simply assumed to be as immutable as human behavior. The development of more effective treatment for HIV (antiretrovirals or ARVs) and opportunistic infections (Ols) had the potential to transform this seemingly irremediable tragedy into a public health opportunity for a comprehensive and effective program to stop the epidemic and ameliorate its impact. Rather than seize on that opportunity, the governments of wealthy nations, the international organizations they control and the multinational pharmaceutical corporations pointedly ignored these developments and continued with business as usual.

    This profound failure and the moral indifference to human life and human rights that underlies it were clear by 1998 when the Geneva conference was held. People living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in most of the world were confronted by the reality that their lives seemed to count for nothing in the global arena and that their own governments responded more to the demands of international trade and finance than to their suffering. Change, if it were to come, would be won as a result of social mobilization and political action.

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