In the Spirit of Ubuntu: Enforcing the Rights of Orphans and Vulnerable Children Affected by HIV/AIDS in South Africa

Abstract

The human immunodeficiency virus ("HIV") and acquired immune deficiency syndrome ("AIDS") have plagued the African continent. In sub-Saharan Africa, the hardest hit region, 22.5 million people were HIV infected as of 2007. 1 The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS ("UNAIDS") estimates that 1.7 million adults and children were newly infected with HIV in that region during 2007 and that another 1.7 million AIDS-related deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa in that year alone.2 In South Africain what has been described as a "calamity,,3 and "the world's deadliest AIDS epidemic" - five and a half million of the country's forty-eight million people are HIV-positive, and nearly a thousand people die of AIDS every day there.4 Despite ongoing efforts to combat the epidemic, the human rights of African children affected by HIV/AIDS have frequently been ignored,6 and, overall, as many as 100 million Africans could lose their lives to AIDS by 2025.