Provide your views at www.measuringhivstigma.com
UNAIDS is coordinating the development of summary measures of HIV-related stigma and discrimination and stigma and discrimination experience by key populations most affected by the AIDS response. These summary measures will:
Provide better understanding of the status of HIV-related stigma and discrimination and progress towards their elimination
Inform action to address stigma and discrimination related to the HIV response
Support advocacy for addressing HIV-related stigma and discrimination
Highlight data gaps
To ensure these measures are meaningful and reflect people’s lived realities and experiences, the virtual consultation aims to be as inclusive as possible and is open to all.
Over three weeks (from 19 August to 6 September), participants can engage in online discussions on key questions structured around three aspects of measuring stigma and discrimination related to the HIV response.
Visit www.measuringhivstigma.com for more information and to participate in the discussion.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes a target to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030. The path to achieving this ambitious target was set by the Political Declaration on Ending AIDS at the UN General Assembly High Level Meeting in June 2016. How to measure whether individual countries are moving towards the 2030 target was the subject of a meeting of experts convened by the UNAIDS Science Panel on 4-6 October 2017 in Glion, Switzerland. That meeting focused specifically on proposed definitions and measures for the term “epidemic control”. Participants of the “Glion meeting” agreed that a new summary metric of impact indicators (e.g. new HIV infections and morbidity and mortality among people living with HIV) should be packaged with improved measures of HIV-related stigma and discrimination and a “policy cascade” that measures whether an enabling legal and policy environment is in place for efforts to eliminate stigma and discrimination.
Various survey questions, indicators and scales have been developed to measure stigma across various context and populations. Data availability varies across these different measures. The number and variety of measures allow to understand diverse manifestations of stigma and discrimination. Individual measures however may not allow to understand in a more comprehensive way what the situation of stigma and discrimination is and how they manifest in the various aspects of a persons’ life, for comparison over time and across contexts. Due to the complexity of the drivers and manifestations of HIV-related stigma and discrimination, no single, globally adopted measure of stigma and discrimination has emerged, making it difficult to arrive at an estimate of prevalence. Summary measure(s) of HIV-related stigma and discrimination would allow countries and global partners to track the status of HIV-related stigma and discrimination, including the legal and policy environment, over time and monitor progress towards the goal of eliminating HIV-related stigma and discrimination, guiding action and measuring if actions are leading to improvements for people affected.
Defining stigma and discrimination
Stigma refers to beliefs and/or attitudes and can be described as a dynamic process of devaluation that significantly discredits an individual in the eyes of others, such as when certain attributes are seized upon within particular cultures or settings and defined as discreditable or unworthy. When stigma is acted upon, the result is discrimination.
Discrimination refers to any form of arbitrary distinction, exclusion or restriction affecting a person, usually (but not only) because of an inherent personal characteristic or perceived membership of a particular group. It is a human rights violation. In the case of HIV, this can be a person’s confirmed or suspected HIV-positive status, irrespective of whether or not there is any justification for these measures. The terms stigmatization and discrimination have been accepted in everyday speech and writing, and they may be treated as plural.
Non-discrimination is one of the basic principles of international human rights law. Thus, discrimination is a human rights violation and is prohibited by international human rights law and most national constitutions. The Commission on Human Rights (now the Human Rights Council) and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights have elaborated on the principle of nondiscrimination and have explicitly recognized HIV status as a prohibited ground of discrimination. Based on existing human rights standards and international commitments a definition of HIV-related discrimination is provided as follows…