"Are you sleeping? Can you go on doing nothing?" South African human rights activist and lawyer Mark Heywood asked human rights organisations, governments, and UN agencies during a Wednesday evening community symposium.

Despite international covenants on human rights, said Heywood, the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa has triggered a cascade of socio-economic disintegration and poverty. Infant mortality is rising again in many countries, and life expectancy is falling in others such as Botswana, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

"This should be setting off alarm bells in every UN agency, development NGO and human rights organisation in the world -- to say nothing of governments," said Heywood, who is with an AIDS law project.

Heywood said human rights abuses related to HIV/AIDS have to be seen in a wider context of governments' behaviour, namely inaction on issues of social equity and, in some cases, outright action to suppress rights. He singled out Nigeria.

"In Nigeria, which may already be the country worst affected by AIDS in Africa, the draft national AIDS plan is effectively a secret document. Participants at a recent seminar in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, complained about being refused access to the draft policy."

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