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 Home Overseas Projects Southern Africa Projects
Urgent Human Rights Issues
Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA has ongoing campaigns relating to:
- Zimbabwe Human Rights
- HIV Treatments Access
- Western Sahara
Zimbabwe Human Rights
Since the late 1990s the situation in Zimbabwe has been deteriorating. For information on the human rights situation in Zimbabwe see our campaign resource pages
or visit Zimbabwe Information Centre (Sydney)
Queensland unions have raised funds for the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights which has led many defence and education campaigns confronting the repression in Zimbabwe. ZLHR and the National Constitutional Assembly are seeking a new and democratic constitution in Zimbabwe. ZLHR also runs training workshops for youth on HIV/AIDS and human rights.
HIV Treatments access
With over 5 million people living with HIV, and hundreds of thousands of deaths each year, South Africa can save lives only by dramatically increasing access by working class people to treatments for HIV and for its opportunistic infections (such as TB and thrush). Leading the world in activism around access to treatments has been South Africa's Treatments Action Campaign fighting western pharmaceutical profiteers and their own government, and mobilising tens of thousands of people with HIV, along with trade unions and churches. Union Aid Abroad has supported TAC in providing "treatments literacy" education, so that people with HIV know about therapies and how to ensure they work well.
Western Sahara
The people of the Western Sahara have been struggling against a brutal occupation by Morocco since 1975, and hundreds of thousands live in refugee camps in the desert, across the border in Algeria, cut off from their homeland and the coast by a militarized "security fence" similar to the one in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The UN and the African Union have been unable to effectively advance the issue of independence. Many trade unions in Australia support solidarity with the refugees, and have been making practical contributions to the camps. Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA has an alliance with the Australia Western Sahara Association so that we can collaborate on relief and development resources for the camps.
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