Protecting and Promoting Health Through Global HIV and Health Law Program

Benin, Guatemala, El Salvador

This program aimed at strengthening and expanding HIV-related legal services and rights in Benin, Guatemala and El Salvador. It targeted prejudice against HIV/AIDS sufferers and for a positive transformation in support of the Zero Discrimination and everyone's right to live a full and productive life with dignity. The program is successfully completed and directly benefited staff in legal service organizations providing free or subsidized legal services to PLHIV and KPs (in Benin); Students and law professors in university legal clinics providing free legal services to PLHIV and Key Population (KPs) (in El Salvador and Guatemala); Staff in the national Office of the Ombudsperson who receive complaints of human rights abuses relating to PLHIV and KPs (in El Salvador and Guatemala); and Prison officers identified as focal points for HIV or health matters (in Guatemala). The program promoted coordination between governmental institutions and civil society organizations (CSOs) involved in the response to HIV, to expand and strengthen the legal services provided to PLHIV and KPs. The capacity building component included: In Benin: Training on HIV, law and human rights with 69 mediators, psychologists, social assistants and lawyers. In El Salvador: Training on “How to become a paralegal” with 22 PLHIV participants, 13 training sessions on HIV and human rights, legal services, and stigma and discrimination with 404 participants selected among universities, health workers, paralegals and KPs networks In Guatemala: Trainings on HIV, human rights and legal aspects related to HIV including 60 paralegals, 215 public officials and 329 students of the School of Penitentiary Studies. Inter-Regional best practices through consultation among international CSOs brought together 32 participants from 17 countries in Latin America, Southern Africa and the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) regions to share best practices in addressing HIV-related discrimination that can be replicated elsewhere, and to identify global and regional areas for joint advocacy as well as concrete actions to advance them. For the establishment of the LAC Network of HIV-related legal services and KPs and to develop a yearly action plan to guide future activities of relevant stakeholders, in January 25-27, 2016, and August 9-12, 2016, IDLO hosted two regional meetings in La Antigua (Guatemala) and Bogota (Colombia), respectively, attended by representatives of CSOs providing legal services, ombudsman offices, human rights national commissions, human rights advocates, international organizations such UNAIDS, and UNDP. With IDLO’s technical assistance, the implementing partner participated in the development of the National HIV/AIDS Plan for 2015-2017 (NHAP), and succeeded in ensuring that the promotion of HIV-related legal services is included into the NHAP, thus scaling up to the national level the services they already provide in the three provinces where it operates. This contributed to the development of the national proposal with regard to Tuberculosis and Malaria, which in early 2016 awarded a sub-grant to continue implementation of activities at the national level.