Deporting HIV positive migrants to countries where HIV treatment is difficult or impossible to access is a violation of their human rights. African HIV Policy Network

“We are not terrorists or criminals, we just want to live, we are human beings and need compassion because it is not easy living with HIV.” This was the emotional plea of a woman living with HIV in the UK who continues to fight not only for her life, but for her right to remain in the UK in order to continue her life saving treatment.

However, the European court of Human Rights (ECHR) - the last resort for many - have decided that it is not inhumane or degrading to deport a HIV positive woman back to her original country of Uganda, where she would not be able to access the HIV treatment needed for survival. The ECHR supported their decision through the findings from the Secretary of state, stating:

“All the AIDS drugs available under the National Health Service in the United Kingdom could also be obtained locally in Uganda, and most were also available at a reduced price through UN-funded projects and from bilateral AIDS donor funded programmes. The applicant’s return would not, therefore, be to a “complete absence of medical treatment”, and so would not subject her to “acute physical and mental suffering.”

This view was also supported by the House of Lords during the Case of N. versus the United Kingdom, in which it took both parties 10 years to make the decision that it was not inhumane or degrading to deport an HIV woman back to Uganda. This decision has caused great concern amongst HIV organisations such as The African Policy Network (AHPN), who expressed their view on the decision in a strongly worded Press statement which read:

“Deporting HIV positive migrants to countries where HIV treatment is difficult or impossible to access is a violation of their human rights.”

This “violation of human rights” is very much apparent in similar cases today in the UK. Melissa Rose, for example, has been living with HIV for five years and told Colourful of her struggle to remain in the UK, during which her application has been rejected five times. Originally from Rwanda, Rose came to the UK in 2002 to flee persecution after the death of her husband. A year later after feeling ill Rose was advised to take a STI test including HIV and the results showed that she contracted the HIV virus.

After receiving her results she was moved from London to Manchester and applied for asylum to remain in the UK on the grounds of her HIV positive status. In 2005 her application was denied and she was detained for one month without a valid reason, and was then again detained for a month three weeks after being released. According to Rose she is resistant to many medications meaning that in comparison to others suffering from the same virus, she needs to be monitored extremely carefully, requiring a doctor’s visit once a month instead of every three months like other patients.

Despite her condition Rose is an active member of her community, training newly diagnosed people with HIV as part of a seven week self- management chronic disease course.She is also a positive speaker for the Black Health Agency and students at university. She feels that she gives more than she receives. In Rwanda where the population is 9,300,000, there are 190,000 people living with HIV/ AIDS and 91,000 are women aged 15 and above.

Refugees deported with HIV have slim chance of survival

I live on a drip and when it stops, I die. Melissa Rose

Even though there is treatment available in Rwanda, like many other countries in Africa such as Uganda, treatment centres are dispersed thoughout the country and basic treatments are not to the same standard that is available in the UK. Therefore, people like Rose are not catered for and without adequate treatment will die.

Rose told Colourful of her fear of being deported back to Rwanda where she will face stigma and discrimination as well as lack of the right treatment for her condition. “I’m so scared, it’s like being on life support and having that support stopped after being on treatment for so long - and it reduces your life span. To go back to your country where you have no accommodation, treatment, no food to eat, nothing, is scary. I felt like why I don’t go into a coma now,” she explained.

The cases of N and Rose are clear examples of inhumane treatment at the hands of those entrusted to safeguard the human rights of people in need. The report published by the Joint Committee on Human Rights Tenth Report of Session 2006-07 entitled: The Treatment of Asylum Seekers stated:

“Absence of treatment for serious infectious diseases raises wider public health risks. The Government should not deport a person in circumstances where that person is in the final stages of a terminal illness and would not have access to medical care to prevent acute suffering while he is dying.”

In Uganda the population of 25 to 30 million people have a life expectancy of 50 years. An estimated figure from UNAIDS reveals that 6.7 per cent of adults in 2005 were living with HIV. Even though this figure may seem low it is detrimental given the social and economic structure of the country. With so many young adults dying from AIDS in Uganda, the labour force, education and health services have been severely affected.

Although treatment such as ARV is available in countries like Uganda, there is approximately one doctor per 12,500 people with ARV clinics located far distances from villages where people are too poor to travel in order to receive treatment needed for their survival. Therefore when migrants such as Case N and Rose living with HIV in the UK are deported to their home countries, their chance of survival is slim.

The stigma faced by many African people living with HIV compounds the medical problems. This has been highlighted in countries such as South Africa where HIV people have been denied jobs within the military due to their HIV positive status. In Uganda President Museveni supported the policy of dismissing or not promoting HIV positive people within the Armed forces and in 2001 suggested that an opposition president should not be appointed as he also had HIV.

AHPN has established a powerful campaign: Destination Unknown which aims to “make the Home office delay the deportation of people living with HIV from the United Kingdom until antiretroviral treatment becomes more widely available.” The organisation believes that migrants such as Case N and Rose are “lost in this process and the Home office are not taking into account those already living in the UK.”

Being deported to unacceptable and dangerous surroundings is a violation, rather than protection of human rights, as AHPN has argued. But for many migrants living with HIV in the UK, the ECHR have turned their backs on those who need them the most, by sending them home to die.

As Rose told Colourful: “I live on a drip and when it stops, I die.”