Anti-discrimination laws for HIV/AIDS workers needed

HIV/AIDS workers needed

Anti-discrimination

laws still don’t exist in the Pacific Islands to protect workers who find them selves living with HIV/AIDS.

The Suva office of the ILO (International Labour Organisation) says there’s a need for Pacific Islands govern ments to make workplaces more open to workers living with HIV/AIDS so that they can work as long as possible.

“HIV is most common to workers whether they be 15 or 40 years, they are productive, educated people and your economy depends on this generation of workers,” says ILO Fiji Programme Officer Margaret Reade Rounds.

She says without adequate planning in the workplace on the rights of workers and employers facing the reality of HIV/AIDS, economies face collapse. Rounds made the comments after a Pacific Islands woman living with HIV/AIDS told a regional HIV/AIDS meeting of being sacked once her employer found out she was HIV posi tive.

At least two other officials at the recent First Pacific Regional Conference on HIV/AIDS and STDs said it’s time for governments to bring in the changes.

The woman was infected by her hus band and lost a child to the virus before knowing about her condition. Her husband has since died, his family has rejected her and her older children, and she has virtual ly no means of financial support.

“HIV policies have not been highlight ed, and they should be,” says Rounds of current labour laws. She says the ILO office in Suva has not received a single formal complaint from any former worker sacked because they are HIV-positive, and blames that on lack of awareness.

“In the Pacific we don’t know what half our rights are, and we don’t know where to

look when those rights are challenged,” she says. She says employers and govern ments are not taking the discrimination issue seriously because the HIV/AIDS problem has not reached epidemic propor tions.

“People don’t realise what happens to

them if they become HIV-positive,” says Rounds. She says the fear that surrounds the virus often results to workplace dis crimination and there is no specific legis lation in the region to protect HIV-positive workers.

Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands are signatories to the ILO convention and many Pacific Islands use the ILO to draft up their own Labour ordi nances.

However, the ILO international anti discrimination laws don’t specifically mention HIV/AIDS because it had not been identified when they were intro duced.

The ILO termination of employment convention does not specifically refer to ‘medical conditions’ as prohibited grounds for discrimination, prompting a call from

some observers for the terms to be extend ed to cover HIV/AIDS.

More legal comment on the rights of workers living with HIV/AIDS came from Miles Young of the Fiji Young Lawyers Association. In a paper presented to the conference Young says legislative mea

sures are part of the multi-sectoral approach needed to effectively fight the spread of HIV/AIDS.

“Until recently we in Fiji and the Pacific generally perceived HIV as a med ical or health issue,” Young says, poli cies were developed from a medical/health perspective with little regard for develop ing legal and human rights-based strate gies”.

He noted discrimination and human rights abuses, “are the experiences of peo ple with HIV the world over, more so in countries where there are no institution alised safeguards”.

A recent UNDP-funded review of human rights in Fiji found those with HIV are not protected from discrimination when refused private medical treatment or employment because of their condition. ■