Doe-eyed and frail, with a mellow voice and a cheery smile, nothing about Sara (not her real name) suggested she had been through ordeal after ordeal in her 22 years. Forcibly married at 15 to a much older man, she discovered after the marriage that her husband had HIV, and that he had infected her. When her in-laws found out, they subjected her to a barrage of abuse and accused her of infecting her husband. Before he died, her husband apologized to her: Deported as a migrant worker from Malaysia for testing HIV positive, he knew he was positive before he married her. He told her he had not known much, though, about HIV itself, how it is transmitted, or that condoms could have kept him and her from becoming infected.

In a submission to the Kenyan Government, Human Rights Watch called on the Government to fulfill its earlier pledge of health funding, instead of reducing the resources allocated to health services.

Children have the right to age-appropriate information about their HIV status and should not be the last to find out that they are HIV-positive. Human Rights Watch described its research in Kenya about the subject and called on the Kenyan government to provide guidance to health workers and parents on disclosure, which could start from the age of 6, taking into account the child’s maturity and the specific clinical and social context.

Progress in the fight against AIDS in the southern United States is undermined by state laws and policies that impose ineffective approaches and fuel stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV.