Interaction Program on HIV Infected and Affected Children's Right to Education

Many cases of violation of right to education of HIV infected and affected children have been reported in Nepali media in the last few days.

Recently, three HIV & AIDS infected children residing in Kaski, were expelled from the school on 11th May, 2009. The children were expelled from School only four days after their enrolment under pressure from their local guardians. The principal of the boarding school, said he had to expel the students as local guardians were not ready to allow the HIV-infected students to study with their own children. “The school administration was helpless. We could not make the guardians understand that it was wrong to treat HIV-infected children so unfairly.” A group of guardians warned that they would enroll their children in another school if those children did not leave, Tiwari added. Founder of the school said the school had enrolled HIV infected kids earlier. “However, the local guardians were unaware of it. Now that they know about it, they are not ready to accept it.” Meanwhile, the child’s mother complained that a local, abused her verbally while she was taking her kids to school. Madhukar’s grandchild also studies in the same school. People advised the school to run a separate classroom for the HIV-infected students.

Reacting to this situation, APACHA Nepal along with CMF, NELA, Shakti Milan, and other member organizations decided to investigate the case and understand the depth about the issue. They opted for a case file in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court on 14th May, 2009 directed the government authorities to promulgate the Act to protect the rights of HIV-positive patients. A division bench directed the Ministries of Health and Law, Justice and Constituent Assembly Affairs to table the bill in the House at the earliest to ensure the rights of HIV+ patients. According to the SC, HIV+ patients should enjoy equal rights and the Act should incorporate this aspect.


Aiming to bring this issue to public debate, Asian People's Alliance for Combating HIV & AIDS (APACHA) Nepal, Conscious Media Forum, Shakti Milan Samaj, Nepal Environmental Lawyers' Association and Youth Action Nepal, jointly organized an interaction program on the Significance of Right to Education for HIV affected Children at Hotel Himalaya, Kathmandu on 19th May, 2009.

The interaction was organized in the context of expulsion of three HIV infected and affected children from a private school in Pokhara, Kaski. Presenting the scenario of discrimination against HIV infected children, Ambika Paudel of Conscious Media Forum, an APACHA Nepal member said that this is not an isolated incident. "Such incidents of discrimination in schools are a regular phenomena in different parts of the country", Paudel cited newspaper reports of the past three months. "We should work together to design a work plan to minimize such incidents" she added.

Meera Kunwar, vice chairperson of Shakti Milan Samaj, a member of APACHA Nepal and a positive person herself shared her experiences of children being deprived of their right to education. "As a positive woman, we have regularly suffered in our journey to provide quality education to our children either infected or not", she said. Children are always associated with women and the women are responsible for the future of their children. "But incidents like the last one at Pokhara forces us to think about our society and its values", Kunwar said.

Rajiv Kafle, President of National Association of PLHA in Nepal expressed his anger saying that “Unfortunately, the HIV positive and affected children are suffering the consequences of HIV & AIDS without any fault of theirs. They have fallen prey to the infection without being involved in any risk behavior and are facing the consequences of their parent’s misdeeds. This is the group that cannot raise their voice themselves and need support of other people. Hence, the issue of such children in Nepal has always been ignored. According to the National AIDS Spending Assessment conducted by HIV control board, only 0.9% of the total expenditure in HIV & AIDS have gone to children focused programs.”

Deputy Director of National Human rights Commission (NHRC), Murari Kharel said that this incident is a violation of human rights. "This is not because of lack of knowledge, but because of their attitude", he said. He admitted that the NHRC has focused mainly on violation of human rights which are mainly political or the incidences of killings and violence. "However, we are planning to focus our activities on such social rights violation too", he said. He admitted to the demand of participants to start a HIV cell at NHRC and said the NHRC will think of starting the process.

Joint Secretary of Ministry of Education, Ram Pravesh Yadav, expressed his commitment to provide education to the expelled children at any cost. "This incident has occurred due to the pressure on school management by the parents of other children. The laws of Nepal do not discriminate against any person on basis of their HIV status", he said. He stressed on working with the parents and school authorities for minimizing such incidences of discrimination. "We should work to assure the parents that their children will not be infected because of studying or playing together with the positive children."

Dr. Laxmi Raj Pathak, Directon of National Centre for AIDS and STD Control (NCASC) highlighted the need to ensure proper education to HIV infected and affected children. "This is not a time to point fingers at each other", he said.

Vice chairperson and chief executive of HIV/AIDS and STD Control Board Dr. Sarad Onta also stressed on joint action. "This is not only the failure of government authorities but failure of all of us who are working on awareness of people on HIV & AIDS issues", Onta said. He emphasized on planning for long term rather than only being reactive to the current incidence. "We certainly need to address the current case and reduce the risk of conflict between parents of non positive students and positive community in Pokhara. But we also need to plan for long term, so that such incidents don’t take place in future", he said. "We should not only take this as a tragic incident but also take it as an opportunity to minimize such incidents in future", he added.

Moderating the program, Hiranya Joshi, coordinator of APACHA Nepal said that we should reflect on where we went wrong. "Children are suffering because they cannot raise their voices themselves. We have to be the medium to raise their concerns and address them properly", he said.

Sara Beysolow, Chief of HIV/AIDS unit in UNICEF Nepal, Narmada Acharya of UNAIDS in Nepal, Geeta Pradhan of Lutheran World Federation Nepal, Gokarn Bhatt, Coordinator of CCM Nepal, Shitoshna Timsina of Nepal Environmental Lawyers' Association and T.N. Ghimire of Conscious Media Forum were among others also spoke at the occasion. Participants at the program signed a joint demand paper to be submitted to concerned government and non government authorities for ensuring the right of education to HIV infected and affected children. The official data in Nepal estimates that over 700 children are infected with HIV while thousands others have been orphaned because of AIDS.

APACHA/ CMF news desk