Fast-Track and Human Rights: Advancing Human Rights in Efforts to Accelerate the Response to HIV

UNAIDS has called on all countries to harness the next several years (until 2020) as a key window of opportunity for rapidly scaling up the HIV response in three main areas: HIV prevention, HIV testing and HIV treatment. This Fast-Track approach—endorsed by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in the 2016 Political Declaration on Ending AIDS—requires maximizing existing tools in order to quicken the pace of progress to achieve specific targets and end the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030.

This document offers guidance on why and how efforts to Fast-Track HIV prevention, testing and treatment services can and should be grounded in human rights. Beyond being an imperative in themselves, human rights principles and approaches are critical to addressing barriers to HIV services and to achieving HIV targets. Human rights principles and approaches will help maximize the reach and impact of HIV prevention, testing and treatment programmes. They also will help address potential human rights challenges and prevent abuses that may occur in the context of urgent efforts to Fast-Track the achievement of HIV prevention, testing and treatment targets.