The need for community participation in policy development
10 May 2006
A new understanding of the importance of community participation in policy development and advocacy is required if ambitions to support the involvement of people living with HIV/AIDS – and positive women in particular – in responding to AIDS are going to be taken to scale, according to the Alliance.
Speaking at ‘Carpe Momento!’ a global conference in Uganda on women, HIV, and human rights organised by Care International, Alliance policy adviser Joseph O’Reilly argued that efforts to ensure that people can participate in policy and decision making represent an essential component of rights-based programming.
“The right to self determination, to a say in decisions which affect us, is the only internationally recognised human right that appears in both principal human rights instruments – the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on the one hand and the Covenant on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights on the other.”
Efforts to support people, especially those most affected by HIV/AIDS, to be heard and to participate in policy and decision-making, are central to sustainable development and the response to AIDS.
For instance, supporting the organisation of female sex workers to improve access to services and diminish abuse by police and other authorities is human rights work, pro-poor development programming, and effective anti-AIDS work.
Similarly, supporting positive women to come together and to generate political interest in and commitment to improving health and other services is essential to the long-term success of more immediate efforts to improve local health services.
“Unfortunately for the most part, activities to support and nurture people’s active participation in decision making remain marginal to the global response to AIDS. Even when support for participation in policy and advocacy is a central component of anti-AIDS programming, it remains under-resourced,” Joseph explained.
Part of the answer to this challenge is in understanding that ‘capacity building for increased influence’ is an essential part of protecting and promoting rights to self determination and participation. Using a human rights framework to understand and represent this work has the potential to bring greater focus and urgency to this work.
The Alliance has called for this approach to be applied with increased vigour to working with women living with and affected by HIV/AIDS.
