HIV help depends on gay law
2009-12-15 11:01
Kampala - Uganda may lose the chance of hosting a major Aids research institution if it passes an anti-homosexual bill that seeks to significantly curtail gay rights, a UN official said on Monday.
UN and Ugandan health officials announced that the Geneva-based African Aids Vaccine Programme (AAVP) will be shifted to Entebbe during an AAVP conference that began in Kampala on Monday.
The move is to boost Africa's participation in Aids vaccine research.
"Criminalising adult consensual sex is not only a human rights issue, it goes against a good HIV strategy," said Catherine Hankins, the chief scientific advisor for UNAids, which alongside the World Health Organisation (WHO) backs the AAVP.
"If the bill passes, UNAids and WHO would have to decide what happens and to see whether this is an appropriate place," she told AFP.
Uganda's Aids Commission director Kihumuro Apuuli welcomed UN's selection of Entebbe as the AAVP headquarters, but has been silent about the bill, which has been widely condemned by human rights and public health officials.
But recently Apuuli said men who have sex with men were not a priority group in Uganda's fight against HIV.
"You go back to France and tell them that in Uganda we have limited resources and have to allocate resources to areas of need," he told AFP.
He said that gays were responsible for less than 1% of new infections in 2008.
Under the draft law, any individual who promotes homosexuality could be sent to jail.
The bill compels any person of authority to report known homosexual activity to the police amd imposes the death penalty in cases of rape of a minor by a person of the same sex, or where one partner is HIV positive.
But senior government officials have said the death penalty provision will be reviewed in parliament.
- SAPA