Tomorrow, European-Union is supposed to elaborate a global agreement about immigration and asylum issues. Act Up-Paris denounces the priority E.U. attaches to the only objectives of "security" and "immigration control", whereas it is supposed to guarantee foreigners, among others those who are affected by serious pathologies, the elementary rights. Within European Union, only one country (France) [...]
May 2002 has marked the second anniversary of the "Accelerating Access" initiative, launched by UNAIDS in a partnership with several UN agencies (WHO, FNUAP, UNICEF and the World Bank) and five pharmaceutical companies (Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Glaxo SmithKline, Merck & Co., and Hoffman-La Roche ). Since the end of 2001 this initiative has been under [...]
The Treatment and Research Commission is the oldest commission of Act Up-Paris. It now has fifteen members who meet twice a month to take stock of the current situation, follow up issue dossiers and hold in-depth discussions of the positions taken by Act Up-Paris in the treatment area.
On November 13, 1999, the French Parliament passed a civil solidarity pact PaCS (Pacte Civil de Solidarité), which provides a legal structure for unmarried heterosexual and homosexual couples.
There are now some 60,000 incarcerated persons in France -- i.e. 50 % more than in 1983. The rise in the prison population corresponds only too well to a general tendency in Europe: criminalization of poverty, a policy that in itself leads to a growing pauperization of the prison milieu. The latter phenomenon hits the inmates, who are confronted with alarming survival conditions (lack of hygiene, poorly balanced nutrition, and grimy, dilapidated buildings).
The Foreigners Commission of Act Up-Paris was created to defend the rights of foreigners living in France who are sick. Participating in the mobilization against immigration laws, first the Debré then the Chevènement laws of 1997 and 1998, it contributed in 1997 to having the law include stipulation of the non-deportability of seriously ill people. Today, a person with AIDS (PWA) may not be legally deported to a country where the necessary treatment and medical supervision are lacking.
For 11 years, Act Up-Paris has been demanding targeted, continuous mass media campaigns that would speak openly both about practices creating risk of AIDS and means of self-protection. It was only in the summer of 1999, nearly twenty years after the beginning of the epidemic that one could finally find a homosexual speaking on television, at midnight, about AIDS and sexuality as part of a prevention campaign.
The epidemic increasingly affects women. Public authorities are alarmed. Nevertheless, nothing is done to give the floor to people with HIV. Speeches, medical practice and prevention addressed to women remain out of touch with the reality of the epidemic.
In April 2000, on the island of Jersey, the 11th international conference on the reduction of risks from drug use never stopped turning in circles around the obstacle of prohibition.
Since one year, pressured by growing international mobilization, pharmaceutical laboratories are trying to improve their image without however, relinquishing control of the markets.