Monday, December 02, 2024

UNAIDS has released a report ahead of World AIDS Day, which emphasises that ending AIDS by 2030 is possible. However, this goal hinges on protecting the rights of individuals affected by HIV. The report is titled Take the Right Path to End AIDS. It puts stress on the vital role of human rights in combating the disease.

Current State of HIV/AIDS

Approximately 39.9 million people are living with HIV globally. Alarmingly, 9.3 million of these individuals are not receiving necessary treatment. Last year, 630,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses. Additionally, there were 1.3 million new HIV infections worldwide. In at least 28 countries, new infections are on the rise.

Importance of Human Rights

Human rights violations hinder progress in the fight against AIDS. Denying education to girls and tolerating gender-based violence are critical issues. Punishing individuals for their identity or sexual orientation further complicates access to healthcare. These violations create an environment where seeking HIV services becomes dangerous.

Leaders must prioritise the protection of rights for all individuals at risk of HIV. Ensuring access to healthcare without fear is essential. Life-saving programmes must reach every person in need. This approach is vital to slowing the spread of the virus.

Global Health Implications

Protecting human rights is crucial for global health. The fight against AIDS cannot succeed without addressing these issues. A commitment to human rights will enhance access to necessary services. This commitment can ultimately save lives and reduce new infections.

To achieve the goal of ending AIDS, concerted efforts are required. Governments and organisations must collaborate to implement effective programmes. Advocacy for human rights must remain at the forefront of these initiatives. Only then can the world hope to eradicate AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.

Important Facts for Exams:
UNAIDS: UNAIDS stands for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. It leads global efforts to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 through advocacy and policy.
Gender-based Violence: Gender-based violence refers to harmful acts directed at individuals based on their gender. It impacts women’s health and access to HIV services, exacerbating the AIDS crisis.
HIV Treatment Gap: The HIV treatment gap indicates the disparity between those living with HIV and those receiving treatment. Approximately 9.3 million people lack necessary life-saving antiretroviral therapy globally.

Caste no bar in prison

Inside prisons, caste, religion, and economic status are not manifested through identity markers entered on paper alone. Names are asked, told, and revealed

A recent Supreme Court judgment has struck down discriminatory practices that have been found coded in prison manuals across India. While the judgment provides a concrete legal basis to advocate for reforms within prison manuals, the mere removal of discriminatory provision is inadequate as caste-based discrimination is deeply entrenched within the culture and practice of prisons.

Every morning, the nearly 4,000 inmates of Bihar’s central jail wake up at 5 am to the sound of a metal gong. The night had been spent in wards that are severely overcrowded. The wards are also organised along caste lines although this is not acknowledged officially. Upon entering the prison, the inmates are allotted a ward on the basis of their caste, be it upper caste, Dalit or Other Backward Classes. Each ward has its own toilets, which are almost always unsanitary. Some states had specific provisions in their manuals directing that only inmates from a certain community should be tasked with cleaning toilets. But even in states like Bihar which do not have any discriminatory provisions, Dalit inmates alone are given these ‘polluting’ and ‘degrading’ tasks. Between 6:30 am and noon, convicts are sent to work in prison-based workshops, making goods like mustard oil, bread, and wooden furniture. Here, too, caste plays a role in the allocation of work: the hardest tasks are reserved for Dalits and the more marginalised among the OBCs, while the clerical or more white-collar duties are taken up by the upper castes. This is not done officially either; it simply is the practice and culture of prisons across India.

Inside prisons, caste, religion, and economic status are not manifested through identity markers entered on paper alone. Names are asked, told, and revealed. If you are from one of the so-called upper castes, you would not be expected to do certain chores. If, on the other hand, you bear a surname such as Manjhi, Das, Rajak, Sada, Paswan, Chaudhari, Dom and Ram or any other name belonging to scheduled caste/scheduled
tribe communities — in Bihar, there are over 197 such groups including OBCs — then, according to prison manuals of several states, you’d be made to do work like cleaning toilets, washing laundry and other such tasks that are considered polluting and degrading.

Although Bihar’s manual contains no such provision, owing to the progressive politics that the state has incepted and pioneered under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan and Karpoori Thakur in the decades after Independence, it would be naïve to believe that caste-based discrimination is not practised in the state’s prisons.

Pinku Thakur (name changed to maintain privacy) belongs to the Nai caste, a group traditionally seen as barbers. However, within Bihar’s highly stratified caste system, Thakurs, despite some social stature, often face caste-based marginalisation, especially in interactions with dominant upper-caste groups and State institutions like prisons. In 2023, Pintu was arrested under the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016, and accused of trading in illegal liquor. Although the charges against him were yet to be proven, Pinku was incarcerated as an undertrial in the central jail where his real
ordeal began.

Upon entering the jail, Pinku faced intense caste-based discrimination. Inside the prison, he was harassed by upper castes who imposed menial tasks upon him, singling him out due to his caste identity. He was forced to clean the toilets of the ward, wash the utensils used by other inmates, and perform personal chores for them. Pinku Thakur’s caste, though not as oppressed as Dalits, still placed him in a vulnerable position within the jail system where the unwritten codes of caste hierarchy dictated behaviour. Upper-caste inmates often refused to interact with him on equal terms. The prison guards, indifferent to his complaints, reinforced this discrimination by either turning a blind eye or tacitly approving of the caste hierarchy within the jail. Pinku’s repeated protests about his ill-treatment fell on deaf ears as the prison authorities were reluctant to intervene in what they deemed were ‘prisoner issues’. His dignity as a human being was eroded by this institutionalised casteism.

The discrimination Pinku Thakur faced is symptomatic of a larger issue in Bihar where the caste system continues to permeate all aspects of life, including the criminal justice system. Within the prison environment, caste-based hierarchies thrive, creating unequal power dynamics among prisoners. While undertrial prisoners like Pinku await justice, they are subjected to harsh social realities that mirror the outside world’s casteist structure.

Prison labour, in theory, is supposed to be shared equally among inmates; however, caste often dictates who does what. Lower-caste prisoners are typically assigned degrading tasks, such as cleaning latrines, picking garbage from wards, cleaning stinking dustbins and messy sheets, while upper-caste prisoners may dominate other duties or avoid such work altogether. In Pinku’s case, his ward mates, predominantly from privileged castes, imposed these menial duties on him as part of the social hierarchy that exists in the prison.

Sunny Manjhi (name changed to maintain privacy), a middle-aged man from the Musahar community in rural Bihar, was arrested in 2022 under the Bihar Prohibition
and Excise (Amendment) Act, 2022. The Musahar community is classified as SC, the lowest tier in the caste-based classification in Hindu religion. They are referred to as Mahadalits because they are often the most oppressed among the Dalit communities.

Since Bihar passed an Act banning production, sale and consumption of liquor in 2016, it has disproportionately affected the Musahar community. While the law was passed to address various social issues, it has inadvertently criminalised an entire community like the Musahars.

On his second day in prison, Sunny Manjhi was assigned the most dehumanising of tasks. He was made to clean toilets, scrub the floors of the cells and toilets, pick up waste from the prison and so on. He and the others from Dalit and OBC communities are not assigned the task of cleaning utensils because upper castes perceive them as untouchables. These tasks were imposed on him based solely on his caste identity.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau data of 2022, 65.9% of prison inmates in India belong to the SC, ST, and OBC categories. Although SCs and STs make up 25.2% of India’s population (as per the 2011 Census), their numbers in prisons are as high as 34%; this means one in every three prisoners belongs to the SC or the ST community.

For Pinku and Sunny, their prison tasks are not merely jobs; they are symbols of the systemic discrimination that has plagued their communities for generations. This reality reflects a broader issue faced by thousands of prisoners across India where caste-based discrimination continues to thrive in institutional settings.

Praveen Kumar is a PhD scholar at JNU and works with undertrials in Bihar’s prisons. Valay Singh is Lead, India Justice Repor

Source: Telegraph India, 30/11/24

Why India holds the key to global target of ending AIDS by 2030

The world has made enormous progress in reducing the impact of HIV over the last 15 years. Globally, 30.7 million people —77 per cent of those living with HIV— were on treatment in 2023, up from just 7.7 million in 2010. This has resulted in a dramatic decline in AIDS-related deaths, down by 51 per cent over the same period. India has also made significant progress in reducing AIDS-related deaths by 79 per cent since 2010, thanks to a strong partnership between government and community, driving free treatment scale-up and the Test and Treat programme under the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO).

Annual new HIV infections have also seen a 44 per cent decline, from 2010 to 2023. However, HIV prevention efforts will need acceleration if India is to close the gap and meet the Sustainable Development Goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.

Although a range of effective treatment and prevention tools have been developed, the world is still not on track to end AIDS as a global health threat by 2030. In at least 28 countries, new HIV infections are on the rise.

So how do we protect the gains and make progress towards the vital 2030 goal?

A new UNAIDS report, ‘Take the Rights Path’, which will be released ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1, shows that upholding rights is the pathway to a robust and sustainable society.

The world can end AIDS as a public health threat if the human rights of all people living with and at risk of HIV are protected. Upholding the rights of women and girls is central to ending the AIDS pandemic.

Gender-based violence increases vulnerability to HIV. The denial of education and information puts people at risk. There is an urgent need to invest in girls’ education and to provide comprehensive sexuality education—a critical component of HIV prevention.

Barriers to accessing healthcare need to be dismantled. For example, more than half of countries have laws that prevent young people from being get tested to learn their HIV status unless they get parental permission, which scares young people away and leads many young people to remain unaware of whether they are living with HIV.

Last year there were an estimated 68,000 new HIV infections here in India. That means around 186 people are newly infected every day. The Global AIDS Strategy calls for 80 per cent of prevention services to be delivered by community-led organizations that are best placed to reach key at-risk populations. These organisations need the right space and sustainable resources to lead.

The criminalisation and marginalisation of groups of people, such as gay men, transgender people, sex workers and people who use drugs, in a number of countries, is undermining efforts to end AIDS. Increasing levels of stigma and discrimination drive people away from HIV treatment and prevention services.

To protect everyone’s health we need to protect everyone’s rights.

There is hope.

Across the world, a number of divisive laws that impede the delivery of public health services to vulnerable groups of people have been removed. Two thirds of countries now do not criminalise LGBTQ people. There is a clear trend also towards the removal of the counterproductive laws criminalizing HIV exposure, non-disclosure or transmission.

India has a long history of exceptional community leadership. The government of India has committed to achieving the 30-80-60 targets for community engagement in the HIV response as set out in the current Global AIDS Strategy.

This means communities should provide 30 per cent of testing and treatment services, 80 per cent of prevention services and 60 per cent of programmes to achieve the societal enablers. Communities must be at the centre of the formulation, budgeting, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all plans, policies and programmes that affect them.The role of the community has been central to India’s HIV response. The partnership approach between government and community is one of the great lessons of the HIV response that can be applied across the health system.

The foundations of response are solid in India. The goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 could be a reality in the country. The next three to five years will be crucial, accelerating HIV prevention efforts will be key. If India can end AIDS as a public health threat then the world can.

UNAIDS new report provides a clear roadmap: To end AIDS, take the rights path.

Written by David Bridger

Source: Indian Express, 29/11/24

Significance of Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping days in the US

‘Black Friday’ falls on Friday (November 29), a day after the US holiday of Thanksgiving. The day – usually associated with massive shopping sprees witnessed across the US driven by attractive discounts and deals – is not marked in many countries globally, but its idea has gradually spread.

In India too, brands like Amazon, Flipkart and PVR have begun offering discounts on the day. However, it has also been criticised on several counts. According to the Associated Press, at a protest of about 200 warehouse workers and delivery drivers in New Delhi, Indian workers joined many Amazon workers globally in calling for higher wages, better working conditions, and union rights. Here is what to know about the day.

What is Black Friday?

Similar to how the months of October and November see discounts in India, given some major festivals (such as Dussehra and Diwali) take place around this time, festival shopping begins around the time of Black Friday in the US. Shoppers are attracted to bulk buys and discounts and they begin their Christmas shopping during this period.

Why is it called Black Friday?

There are different stories behind this. One view says it was to denote that companies were no longer “in the red” and instead doing well. But, according to Britannia, a more accurate version comes from the early 1960s, when police officers in the city of Philadelphia began using the phrase “Black Friday” to describe the chaos that resulted, when large numbers of suburban tourists came into the city to begin their holiday shopping.

The huge crowds created a headache for the police, who worked longer shifts as they dealt with traffic jams, accidents, shoplifting, and other issues, as shoppers thronged. In the 1980s, Black Friday was described as the day stores began to turn a profit for the year and as the biggest shopping day in the United States, though by some figures that may be the period right before Christmas.

“In more recent years, Black Friday has been followed by other shopping holidays, including Small Business Saturday, which encourages shoppers to visit local retailers, and Cyber Monday, which promotes shopping online. Giving Tuesday has also emerged to spur charitable donations,” according to the encyclopedia.

Black Friday’s global spread and criticism

With the success of Black Friday for companies, the idea has taken hold globally. Though not in November, many countries have their own versions of such sales. Companies like Amazon, which have operations on a large scale now, are also able to hold sales elsewhere with their expansion. But the global shift towards a more consumerist way of life has its critics. In the larger culture, Black Friday is associated with videos of chaos and even violence surfacing on social media, as shoppers resort to physical fights to secure special items on sale.

In recent years, many see Black Friday as a symbol of over-consumption that makes people buy products that are not needed, adding to waste generation and the increase in carbon footprint, simply because items are sold cheaper on one particular day.

Some years ago, activists in France staged Black Friday protests against Amazon, blaming the service for exacerbating climate change through its rapid deliveries when it introduced the concept of Black Friday sales to European markets.

The “Stop Black Friday” amendment in France was proposed around this time as part of an anti-waste Bill, which was put forward by France’s former environment minister Delphine Batho. The amendment proposed the integration of “Black Friday” advertising as part of “aggressive commercial practices” punishable by imprisonment of up to two years and a fine of €300,000. Amazon has also been accused of not providing safe working conditions for its employees during this time, particularly the workers involved in major logistics work and deliveries.

Source: Indian Express, 29/11/24

Can suing fossil fuel companies slow plastic production?

California is suing oil and gas major ExxonMobil. The case has highlighted the connection between fossil fuel companies and plastic waste, as well as the need for a cap on plastic production.

The idea of 400 million tons is too huge to be easily graspable. Yet that is the volume of virgin plastic produced annually. It is also roughly the weight of the entire human population.

Regardless of its existing heavyweight footprint, plastic is on track to take up even more space in the world. Current projections suggest today’s output will roughly triple by 2060. Currently, an estimated 20 million tons of plastic end up in the environment each year, while annual global recycling rates stand at just 9%.

For years, experts and civil society groups have been sounding the alarm on the impossibility of recycling our way out of the growing mountains of plastic waste, calling instead for a cap on production. But for those same years, the wheels of the manufacturing machine have continued to turn — at an ever-giddier pace.

And in an age of booming renewable energy sources, the increasing production volume of virgin plastic, has much to do with the oil and gas industries. The vast majority is made using fossil fuels.

What do fossil fuel companies have to do with plastics?

“Fossil fuel companies today do not rely on selling gasoline or fuel for energy or transport as a way to stay alive,” said Delphine Levi Alvares, global petrochemicals campaign manager at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) in a briefing. “They are increasingly relying on producing petrochemicals.”

Which ultimately means the companies that have traditionally sold the world its fuel, are now investing in producing ever more plastic. To the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

Reducing production has emerged as a contentious issue during two years of talks to reach a global plastics treaty. Whether the final round, currently underway in South Korea, will deliver agreement on that point remains to be seen. But there are other meaningful moves afoot to force change. Not least via a legal complaint filed earlier this year by the US state of California against oil and gas major ExxonMobil.

Can a lawsuit change the amount of plastic?

In the lawsuit, California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta alleges that ExxonMobil, the biggest producer of single-use plastics in the world “aggressively promoted the development of fossil-fuel-based plastic products and campaigned to minimize the public’s understanding of the harmful consequences of these products.”

And as such had “deceived Californians for almost half a century by promising that recycling could and would solve the ever-growing plastic waste crisis.”

Mark James, interim director of the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law and Graduate School said that although ExxonMobil does not sell directly to consumers doing their groceries, oil and gas companies have been very intentional in creating markets for the plastic products that go into the shopping basket.

“There has definitely been marketing of the recyclability of plastics to those end users,” he said. “But it is an industry creation and once we know that, we can understand all the things that they have been doing to maintain that false sense of recyclability of their product.”

In a response to the claim, ExxonMobil said that California officials “had known their recycling system isn’t effective” and had failed to act. At the time of publication, the company had not responded to a DW request for further comment.

Levi Alvares sees the California lawsuit as a critical step joining the dots that the broader public does not always see — to make the connection between plastic production and fossil fuel companies.

“This kind of lawsuit really cements in people’s minds this trend that lots of people haven’t been connecting the impact these companies have on the climate crisis to the impact they have in other sectors.”

What is advanced recycling and is it the solution?

Because despite the historically low rate of global recycling — just 10% of all plastic ever produced has been turned into something else — and the reality that many products cannot easily be processed into other goods, ExxonMobil is betting on “advanced recycling.” This technology, it says “converts plastic waste back into molecular building blocks,” meaning they become the raw material for new products.

The company says it has used advanced recycling to “process more than 60 million pounds [27.2 million kilograms] of plastic waste into usable raw materials, keeping it out of landfills.” And just weeks after California filed its lawsuit, ExxonMobil announced it was expanding its capacity.

But the California complaint, which is based on two years of investigation, says even in ExxonMobil’s “best-case scenario,” advanced recycling will account for a tiny fraction of the plastic the company continues to produce. And is therefore “nothing more than a public relations stunt meant to encourage the public to keep purchasing single-use plastics that are fueling the plastics pollution crisis.”

The elephant in the room: virgin plastic production

Adam Herriott, senior specialist at global environmental action NGO WRAP says from their position at the very start of the plastic supply chain, fossil fuel companies “significantly impact the volume of plastic entering the market,” and that “by actively participating in efforts to reduce virgin plastic production, they can help drive systemic change.”

Yet like other leading fossil fuel, petrochemical and fast-moving consumer goods companies, ExxonMobil is a member of the independent global non-profit Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW), which works to tackle plastic once it has become waste rather than addressing the issue through reduced production.

In an email to DW, a spokesperson for the Alliance said its mandate mainly focuses on developing “solutions that support the collection, sorting, and recycling of plastic waste to promote a circular economy for plastic.” The statement added that AEPW believes “it is the sum of the work of the multiple stakeholders — from upstream to downstream solutions — that will help solve the challenge.”

How successful will litigation against fossil fuel companies be?

There is plenty riding on California’s case against ExxonMobil.Not just whether the company will be ordered to meet California’s demands, which include monetary damages, and for the company to stop making misleading claims, but whether it leads to similar actions elsewhere that could try to force the hand of fossil fuel companies through the courts.

Patrick Boyle, corporate accountability attorney with CIEL, says he expects to see more such cases in the US, and even beyond because evidence and testimony presented in the context of the Exxon suit — which is likely to play out over a matter of years — will become public record.

“It may not look exactly like this like litigation against Exxon with these specific claims,” he said, but collected evidence could potentially be leveraged to fight other cases around issues like microplastics, greenwashing or permits for advanced recycling.

“So, I think there’s a lot of really interesting conversations and brainstorming to have and begin having with partners to see how do we leverage what we get here, in the international context.” In the meantime, Levi Alvares says the complaint against Exxon is strengthening the understanding that plastic waste is a problem “engineered by industry.”

By: Deutsche Welle

Source: Indian Express, 1/12/24

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