Living with HIV and advocating for health rights in urban Zimbabwe

This paper explores intersections between the HIV and human rights in Zimbabwe, a country with a high HIV prevalence and a contested human rights record. In-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted with 60 people living in poor communities in the capital, Harare, are used to explore their lived experiences of HIV. The participants’ responses indicate the essential role that human rights play in successfully living and surviving with HIV. We identify health-rights standards and use a rights-based analysis to discuss a range of health-related concerns, in particular, those related to treatment and the social mediation of disadvantage. The social determinants of health and structural violence conceptually frame our understanding of the participants’ accounts of successes and failures in relation to poverty reduction, gendered disadvantage, discrimination and public health and illustrate how the individual and collective agency generated by rights-based empowerment can improve health and well-being in difficult political and social environments.