Boundary Institutions and HIV/AIDS Policy in Brazil and South Africa (original) (raw)
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Southern Africa's response(s) to international HIV/AIDS norms: the politics of assimilation
Review of International Studies, 2006
This article is interested in the impact of a singular international phenomenon, namely the global securitisation of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, on the domestic structure of three Southern African states: Botswana, Mozambique and South Africa. These countries are geographically located in the epicenter of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, Southern Africa. However, notwithstanding their common HIV/AIDS burden, Botswana, Mozambique and South Africa present quite different political cultures and institutions which reflected upon the distinctive way they responded to the influence of international HIV/AIDS actors and norms. So, by investigating the latter's impact in these rather diverse settings, the present analysis aims to empirically demonstrate and compare variations in the effects of norm adaptation across states. To carry out this evaluation, the study provides a framework for understanding the securitisation of HIV/AIDS as an international norm defined and promoted mainly by the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the US government and transnational HIV/AIDS advocacy networks. The HIV/AIDS securitisation norm (HASN) is an intellectual attempt of the present work to synthesise in a single analytical concept myriad of ideas and international prescriptions about HIV/AIDS interventions.
Sustaining a Rights-Based Response to HIV in Brazil In this chapter, we look to the three presidential administrations that most affected Brazil’s national response over the past decade: Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1994–2002), Luiz Ignacio da Silva Lula Inácio (popularly referred to as ‘Lula’) (2003–2010) and Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016), to discuss why and how the approach appears to have weakened over time and raise larger questions about the challenges of sustaining a rights-based response. We focus specifically on the 2010–2016 time-period, highlighting the major changes in Brazil’s political land- scape and how these changes have affected HIV prevention actions. A brief case study of the female sex worker movement illustrates how broader political changes affected one of the population groups that has been central to Brazil’s response to HIV since the beginning. We conclude by offering thoughts on how to strengthen future actions to address HIV in Brazil by reinvigorating a rights-based agenda and creating a more strategic partnership between government and civil society.
Throughout the 1990s, Brazil and South Africa faced the dual challenges of consolidating their new democratic forms of government while managing AIDS crises that were rapidly spiraling into full-fledged epidemics. Disregarding existing international consensus about the best practices for developing countries to address the HIV epidemic, these countries took approaches at odds with recommendations by widely recognized experts in public health and economics. Leaders of both countries expressed beliefs that the responses established for addressing the HIV epidemic lacked concern for the lives of people in developing countries and sought nationalist solutions to the problems of HIV/AIDS. However, in their opposition to the scientific hegemony of the moment, Brazil and South Africa followed very different policy paths. Brazil challenged the international consensus that cost and low levels of education were prohibitive barriers to providing antiretroviral (ARV) treatments to people in dev...