Human Rights Watch: Life Doesn't Wait: Romania’s Failure to Protect and Support Children and Youth Living with HIV

Sample Letter

President Traian Basescu
Palatul Cotroceni,
Strada Geniului nr. 1-3, Sector 5
Bucharest
ROMANIA
E-mail: procetatean@presidency.ro
Fax: +40 21 410 3858

Prime Minister Călin Popescu - Tăriceanu
Chancellery of the Prime Minister
Piata Victoriei nr. 1, Sector 1
Bucharest
ROMANIA
E-mail: drp@pm-control.ro
Fax: +40 21 313 9846

Dear [President Băsescu, Prime Minister Popescu – Tăriceanu],

I write to express my concern over Romania’s failure to protect children and youth living with HIV from abuse and neglect and its failure to take effective measures to combat widespread discrimination against people living with HIV. I urge you to take immediate measures to ensure the rights of Romanian children and youth living with HIV to education, health, privacy, and information, and to protection from discrimination, abuse, and neglect.

An August 2006 report by Human Rights Watch documented discrimination against HIV-positive children and youth in access to education and medical care, widespread and unpunished breaches of confidentiality by medical personnel, school officials, and government workers, and restrictions on doctors’ ability to counsel children on health and sexuality due to legal bans on disclosing HIV status to children without parental consent. The report also criticized Romanian legislation criminalizing the knowing transmission of HIV, and instituting mandatory HIV testing and arbitrary restrictions on work in certain fields. Children facing discrimination, abuse, and neglect received little assistance due to inadequate government complaint and child protection mechanisms.

The vast majority of Romania’s children living with HIV will soon become adults, but thus far the report indicates that the government has done little to ensure their integration in society and their protection from abuse and neglect. I urge you to take urgent action to:

Provide effective and appropriate for discrimination against people living with HIV, and make them enforceable against all civil servants and medical, social and educational personnel who breach confidentiality;
Ensure that children and youth living with HIV have access to education that is appropriate to their needs, including access to accurate information on reproductive health and HIV and AIDS;
End mandatory HIV testing as a condition of employment and ensure that people living with HIV are not unnecessarily prevented from working or attending vocational school;
Ensure that people living with HIV have adequate access to medical care, including medications needed to treat HIV and common opportunistic infections;
Protect children and youth living with HIV from abuse and neglect, and ensure that HIV-positive children and youth with mental and physical disabilities enjoy the right to special care suitable to their condition;
Ensure that children and youth living with HIV are fully informed on how their rights and benefits will change after they turn 18, and that children and youth in foster, extended family and residential care are adequately prepared for independent living;
Provide appropriate continuing services to young adults who may require them; and
Repeal article 384 of the Criminal Code, a law that criminalizes the knowing transmission of HIV, but in practice increases discrimination against children and youth living with HIV and can act as a barrier to youth seeking health care or police protection.

Thank you for your attention to these concerns.

Sincerely,