Alissa Trotz is editor of the In the Diaspora column
For the past two weeks the Caricom Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (Impacs) has been featured in the Diaspora column, in which Arif Bulkan brought to public attention the organisation’s requirement that prospective employees undergo HIV tests in clear contravention of international best practices. When contacted for a comment, Minister of Health Leslie Ramsammy said clearly that this was wrong and went against a position that was being advocated by Caribbean Ministers of Health. In his letter to SN of September 12, Caricom’s Assistant Secretary-General for Human and Social Development Dr Eddie Greene went further by emphasizing not only that the Caricom Secretariat is adopting the ILO workplace policy which expressly forbids HIV testing as pre-employment screening, but that this was also included in the draft model anti-discrimination policy completed earlier this year, that would be adopted across the region and apply to both the public and private sectors.
The sequence of events as they unfolded in the press raises a number of important issues. In his remarks at the opening of the 15th meeting of the regional co-ordinating mechanism of the Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV and AIDS (Pancap), which took place in Montego Bay, Dr Greene described Pancap as embodying the principles of functional co-operation and referred to the scope of the partnership as all embracing, calling for a “multi-sectoral approach [that] must be guided by creative and dedicated leadership.”
Undoubtedly, of Caricom’s three pillars, foreign policy co-ordination, economic integration and functional co-operation, it is the latter that can be said to have achieved the most in the nearly four decades of the movement’s existence. But this case underlines just what some of the challenges of an integrated and multi-sectoral approach to HIV-AIDS are. As it turned out, one did not have to look much farther than within another Caricom related agency to find practices that completely undermined Pancap’s mandate, which it defines on its website as “raising the political profile of AIDS in the Caribbean, mobilizing resources, establishing a culture for collaboration and coordination and creating an understanding about the Caribbean epidemic within the global context.”
This brings us to another point. As Bulkan pointed out in his column, Pancap counts among its partners a number of supranational and governmental bodies like the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the World Bank. And a significant proportion of its funding comes from external sources. There are several legitimate criticisms of being so reliant on outside donors: the percentage of the monies that are recycled to Western countries in the form of consultancies that privilege outside experts with little knowledge of or long-standing commitment to the region; having to be more accountable upwards to funders rather than to the constituencies one is supposedly serving; the amount of time spent seeking out resources in an increasingly difficult global economic climate, as Grenada’s Health Minister Ann Peters and chairperson of the Regional Co-ordinating Mechanism of Pancap noted at the Jamaica meeting. At the same time, HIV testing as pre-employment screening is prohibited by nearly all of Pancap’s partners, and here it was absolutely in the interest of women and men seeking work within the region, to have this issue raised and to ask partners and funders to add their voices to those wishing to draw attention to these discriminatory practices.
Unfortunately, it is not even this simple. In fact, staff at the ILO and several other agencies had been made aware of the discrepancy between best and actual practices, as evidenced by Impacs. Organizations that are specifically addressing HIV-AIDS and that have offices or networks in the Caribbean were also contacted, like UNAIDS and AIDS-Free World (the latter was founded by Stephen Lewis, the former UN Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa, and on its website describes itself as an international advocacy organization that works to promote more urgent and effective global responses to HIV/AIDS). Why could they not have brought some pressure to bear and what did they stand to lose? Are they not also therefore complicit? We might also ask, where were the activists and NGOs within the region all this time, who could have taken the initiative and leadership on this question? These days the discourse that circulates – and not just in the Caribbean – is about civil society, about the role of NGOs in ensuring accountability and contributing to a dynamic and engaged citizenry. In this case there was much buzz and funding and activity and activism around health and HIV-AIDS in the region, suggesting that one would not have to stick one’s neck out to raise an issue concerning discrimination. Moreover, there were already international best practices to follow, and as Dr Greene has noted, these are now in the process of being adopted across the region. The Pancap Newsletter issued by Caricom in June 2010 explicitly says the following: “No worker should be required to undertake an HIV test or disclose his/her HIV status.” In other words, the ground was already cleared, and advocacy on this issue was not exactly a revolutionary act. After all, what could be more fundamental than the right to a livelihood?
Instead, going it alone was precisely what ended up happening. It was left to one man whose job interview had been stalled by his legitimate refusal to be subjected to HIV testing in 2008, and who made the courageous decision to go public after waiting for two years for some kind of response. As we know only too well, the Caribbean can be a mighty small place, and it must have been an incredibly difficult decision for him to be the whistleblower here, not knowing whether and how it would affect his chances for future employment in regional agencies. He should be applauded for deciding to break the silence. By sharing his story he has cleared the ground for others, forced a public discussion of these issues, and raised awareness among peoples in the region about their rights. We now know that it was not an isolated incident, for as we saw in a September 15 letter to Stabroek News, Terry Ally has added his voice by describing how consideration of his job application at Impacs was similarly stopped after he too refused HIV testing. This suggests that those actually hired to work at Caricom Impacs, submitted to HIV testing in advance of their employment. Were they unaware of their rights, or did they have questions but felt they had no choice if a job offer were to be made? But it is a shame, and a shameful comment on all those organizations (made up of individuals whose mandate is to comprehensively address HIV-AIDS in the region), that it is only by going public individually that this man – and now we – may finally get an answer.
The column was circulated widely across the region some days in advance of the Pancap meeting that opened to much fanfare in Montego Bay on September 9. As I write, it is not at all clear whether this issue – not the specific case, but the general principle it underlined – was tabled. All that has come in the way of response is a letter from Dr Greene that seemed more determined to rebut the column’s claims by addressing the particulars of the individual’s application, underlining yet again just how risky it was for him to go public with this when the issue at stake was not his specific situation but rather what it gestured to in a broader sense. However, Dr Greene offered no answers to the questions posed by the Diaspora column: Was Impacs engaged in screening prospective employees for HIV? If so, was anything done about this and when did Impacs abolish this requirement, if in fact it has? Is there any recourse for potential employees whose applications were stopped after they refused such tests? Finally, as a gesture of good faith, can we expect that Impacs will resume the hiring process in relation to those whom they excluded in the past for refusing to take an HIV test?
Some may take issue with Bulkan’s September 6 description of some of these regional and international meetings and workshops as little more than ‘Eat, Prey, Talk’ events. NGOS and international organizations walk a thin line in a world of growing inequalities. Let me put it this way. It’s important to be acutely aware that for those working with and in them, one is making one’s living from pressing issues like violence, poverty, disease, etc. Those salaries are based upon the existence of these social problems and inequalities. So taking the job most seriously means that one’s work should be single-mindedly directed towards abolishing the need for one’s job description. With this in mind, and from the point of view of this case, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that in the regional and international NGO community, quiescence took precedence over advocacy. Don’t rock the boat, but who was really being protected? In this instance it was clearly not those individuals whose experiences of discrimination are the basis upon which several of these organizations were presumably established. ‘Plenty talk, little action’; Certainly that is how it has come across to many.
