Protectors or perpetrators? The impact of unlawful policing on HIV, human rights and justice

Introduction

The police exist to maintain peace, law and order, to protect and respect people’s fundamental rights and freedoms, to combat crime, and to provide assistance and services to the public. But of all of the police’s duties, the most fundamental is the protection of human rights. Indeed, the police’s responsibility to protect rights is not only an objective, but also necessary for policing to be effective.

Respect for and protection of human rights is also critical to ending AIDS. UNAIDS’ Global AIDS Strategy 2021 – 2026 is crystal clear: ending inequalities is central to ending AIDS as a public health threat. Similarly, in its new strategic framework, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Global Fund) states that maximising health equity, gender equality and human rights is essential to ending AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria. This high-level prioritisation of rights and equality is much needed, and it has been particularly welcomed by marginalised communities because they know better than anyone else the extent to which human rights-related barriers block access to HIV services.

This is the first in a series developed by Frontline AIDS and our partners, which draws on real-life stories of human rights violations documented by marginalised communities through REAct. Frontline AIDS launched REAct in 2015 to address the fact that communities most affected by HIV are stigmatised, discriminated against and criminalised, there is often no reliable data even on their very existence, let alone the barriers people from these communities face when they try to access HIV services. Since then, marginalised communities in 31 countries have used REAct to generate data that shows the true nature and scale of the human rights violations they face.

Through this series, Frontline AIDS and our partners will reveal the key trends, themes and challenges that repeatedly appear in the data that marginalised communities collect. This first report focuses on unlawful policing practices because law enforcement officials are responsible for a startlingly wide range of human rights abuses and because the police play, or should play, a key role in ensuring other actors who violate marginalised people’s rights are held accountable. While the report draws on data collected by partners in South Africa and six Eastern European and Central Asia (EECA) countries4, the issues it presents are universal across every single country in which REAct operates.

Also universal is the damage criminalisation does. This report is a call to action to all who read it – governments, multilaterals, donors and civil society – to work together with marginalised communities to change the laws that criminalise their innate qualities, their health status and their lives. It is also a call for more investment in community-led monitoring. Community-led data is urgently needed to push for better programming, more targeted financing and the courageous policy decisions that are needed to remove the human rights barriers that are hampering an effective HIV response, and the creation of just and compassionate societies.