Extracts of English speech of Jean-Luc Romero

First of all I would like to say that Aids is a main concern for Ile-de-France Region, a priority of its policy regarding health. Ile-de-France has half of people living with Aids in France. It is also one of the Europe regions most affected by the disease.
The region has been involved in the fight against that scourge for 20 years now, and allocate every year 5 million Euros to the prevention of HIV and the monitoring of affected people in Ile-de-France. With that amount, we support the actions of numerous organizations involved in the fight against Aids on our territory. We also fund the regional centre of information and prevention of Aids (CRIPS), the operational arm of our regional policy in that area.
CRIPS is a resources centre at the disposal of professionals of social, health and education sectors, but beyond for all people involved in the fight against Aids, hepatitis and risky behaviours, i.e. 10 000 people a year. But CRIPS is also a stakeholder in the prevention at high school level in Ile-de-France. Each year, its leaders go to meet 140 000 of them in schools. At the same time they receive 15 000 at Cybercrips, a platform of play and educational exchange and 25 000 on the stands to which CRIPS takes part.
Since is Aids goes beyond the borders of Ile-de-France, it is a worldwide scourge and also because we believe our region should be a region open to the world, we also consider  that fight against Aids should be an important area of our international policy especially our decentralized cooperation policy.
Elected member of Ile-de-France since 1998, I have pushed for an amendment of relevant legislations so that all our cooperation agreements should also deal with Aids. Actions presented by Aids Consortium which have been run for 10 years now in the framework of our partnership with Gauteng Province (our very close friend and ally) are a concrete materialization of our commitment.

Extracts of Jean-Luc Romero's speech in Johannesburg - December 2th

First of all I would like to say that Aids is a main concern for Ile-de-France Region, a priority of its policy regarding health. Ile-de-France has half of people living with Aids in France. It is also one of the Europe regions most affected by the disease.

The region has been involved in the fight against that scourge for 20 years now, and allocate every year 5 million Euros to the prevention of HIV and the monitoring of affected people in Ile-de-France. With that amount, we support the actions of numerous organizations involved in the fight against Aids on our territory. We also fund the regional centre of information and prevention of Aids (CRIPS), the operational arm of our regional policy in that area.

CRIPS is a resources centre at the disposal of professionals of social, health and education sectors, but beyond for all people involved in the fight against Aids, hepatitis and risky behaviours, i.e. 10 000 people a year. But CRIPS is also a stakeholder in the prevention at high school level in Ile-de-France. Each year , its leaders go to meet 140 000 of them in schools. At the same time they receive 15 000 at Cybercrips, a platform of play and educational exchange and 25 000 on the stands to which CRIPS takes part.

Since is Aids goes beyond the borders of Ile-de-France, it is a worldwide scourge and also because we believe our region should be a region open to the world, we also consider  that fight against Aids should be an important area of our international policy especially our decentralized cooperation policy.

Elected member of Ile-de-France since 1998, I have pushed for an amendment of relevant legislations so that all our cooperation agreements should also deal with Aids. Actions presented by Aids Consortium which have been run for 10 years now in the framework of our partnership with Gauteng Province (our very close friend and ally) are a concrete materialization of our commitment.

Allow me to say a few words as a person living with Aids for close to 25 years now. Indeed, as 33 million persons in the world I am HIV positive. Live with HIV is to know that you are dying. Even worse, to feel pointed an accusing finger.

Aids, a very deadly disease, is also a social, discriminating disease, a disease that jeopardizes and isolates. A disease you cannot declare. In France a study has revealed that when HIV positive persons declare their status at work, half of them lose their job in the next 6 months.

We tend to fear more HIV positive people than the disease. To illustrate that, 2 examples:

the 1^st concerns restrictions of the freedom of movement and settlement for HIV positive people in the world. You might not know it but if you are HIV positive you cannot go for holidays in Russia. It is also complicated for a HIV positive person to work or study in Australia or Canada, a HIV test is required. 66 countries around the world have specific regulations regarding the entry on their territory of HIV positive people, 31 deport them when diagnosed with the virus. You can see how far we are still 30 years after the beginning of the epidemic! Rather than putting more efforts on the prevention and information, these states are considering Aids as a foreigners’ disease, and have adopted a simplistic solution: prevent HIV positive persons to enter the territory or deport them, thinking this is the best way to solve the problem. What a stupidity…Restrictions to freedom of movement and settlement of HIV positive people have a single effect: undermine prevention efforts made by stakeholders of that fight. Adopt that kind of legislations is simply to fight the HIV positive person and not the disease.

The second example concerns the criminalization of transmission of HIV. What is criminalization? It is the fact of criminally convict a HIV positive person who has transmitted HIV. Obviously there is nothing wrong to punish those people who intentionally transmit the virus. However this constitutes only scare cases.

In the general debate on the criminalization, more and more persons have been successfully prosecuted for transmission of HIV/Aids as we have been able to see on media. So, according to a report of the International Federation of family planning, 58 countries in the world have adopted specific legislations or use existing ones to criminalize the transmission of HIV. 33 are considering imitating them.

It is my submission that this policy does not assist in the change of behavior and does not have a deterrent effect; it even makes people to be more irresponsible. Indeed the underlying message would be: if you don’t want to get in trouble with justice, don’t get tested! This criminalization policy undermines all the efforts to promote HIV testing, since we all know that HIV testing should be encouraged so that treatment can be started early. It is one of the priorities of the new French plan of fight against HIV/Aids. So I strongly affirm that criminalization contributes to the spread of the virus

In a nutshell, more than ever, I affirm that human rights must be placed at the heart of the fight against HIV/Aids. Let us recall Jonathan Mann’s statement who once said that health measures may only be effective if affected people are informed and take part in the decision making process regarding their health. Better health and respect of human rights are two inseparable concepts. Thus, no significant progress in the fight against HIV/Aids can be effective without an entire and full respect of rights of people. This must be a priority of all stakeholders in the fight against Aids and this must also be a true priority for the whole political world