Thank you Mr. Chair,

My intervention will focus on one of the gaps identified in the Secretary General’s report, which is the insufficiency of efforts to protect, promote and fulfill human rights in the response to the HIV crisis.

In 1993, all members of the United Nations adopted the Vienna Declaration of Human Rights, which recognized that human rights are interrelated and indivisible. Rather than see the international community incorporating this fact in its response to the AIDS crisis, we see a sad politicization that divides it into two camps: a camp that champions women’s rights and the human rights of vulnerable groups, and another camp which defends access to affordable treatment in the face of excessive intellectual property protections, protections that do not take into account public health needs of poor populations.

It is about time that states in both camps wake up to the fact that the right to health-- including access to affordable treatment--, the right to freedom from sexual and gender-based violence, the right to have control over, and decide freely on matters related to, one’s sexuality and reproduction, and the right to live with dignity and free from discrimination are all prerequisites for any effective response to HIV/AIDS.

Denying one or more of these human rights in order to protect the interests and profits of businesses is neither responsible nor acceptable; similarly, it is neither responsible nor acceptable to use religion, morality or cultural claims selectively and politically in order to deny the human rights of any human being or to hinder the provision of prevention, care or treatment services to members of vulnerable groups solely on the basis of their belonging to these groups.

As you heard now from the Secretary General’s Special Envoy, these vulnerable groups-- all of them-- exist in every country and every region, including the region that I come from. Suppressing a list that names them in any political document will not lead them to simply disappear.

My organization is a member of the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies, which includes 60 organizations in the Middle East, North Africa and South and South East Asia. These organizations struggle on a daily basis to provide sexual and reproductive health services; reform laws that discriminate or violate human rights, including sexual and reproductive rights; provide comprehensive sexuality education; combat violence against women, including marital rape and sexual abuse; protect and reach out to vulnerable groups and break the taboos associated with sexuality. 

It is a reality that this work is taking place in almost every Muslim country, often with the assistance of health ministries. This reality is not always clear in the UN.

Finally, I share the concern expressed by the distinguished representative of New Zealand, and the embarrassment expressed by the distinguished representative of Ghana regarding the ongoing negotiations of the political declaration, and I commend them for their frank statements. I urge all state representatives present here to take the spirit of this room into the negotiations room today and tomorrow. Once on the negotiations table, I kindly ask them to put in front of them, or their state’s negotiator, a copy of the written statement they read now, perhaps this will help them realize the vast discrepancy between political rhetoric and negotiating tactics.