RESOURCE MOBILIZATION
Toolkit: Scaling Up HIV-Related Legal Services
available to certain subpopulations, such as men who have sex with men, transgender people, people who use illicit drugs, prisoners, sex workers, youth, homeless people or women. Income: many legal aid, nongovernmental organization, pro bono or community-based legal services are only available to the unemployed or lowincome earners. Kinds of legal issues Some services offer advice on both criminal and non-criminal law (civil and public/administrative law). Some services are highly specialized and may only offer advice and assistance on specific issues, such as one or more of the following: criminal matters and prisoners’ rights, family and domestic relations, discrimination, tenancy and housing, wills and estates, employment or welfare rights. Most legal aid or nongovernmental organization legal services will not offer advice on commercial matters. Some services offer advice to organizations such as HIV service organizations, people living with HIV groups and trade unions, as well as to individuals. Consideration will need to be given as to the criteria to be applied to determine whether a case is HIV-related (see Section 2 above). Coverage of legal services It is important to define the nature and level of service coverage that a programme might aim to achieve. The World Health Organization defines coverage as “the proportion of the population in need of an intervention which has received an effective intervention”.7 A measure of coverage could identify: • The proportion of the target population reached with any level of legal advice, representation or information over a given period; or • The proportion of the target population with an HIV-related legal problem that is provided with good quality legal information, advice and representation services over a given period.
7
Hogarth J (1975). Glossary of healthcare terminology. Copenhagen, World Health Organization. Available at http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/ 9290201231.pdf.
Most services will strive to ensure that every person with an HIV-related legal problem in a particular geographic area can have access to legal information, advice and representation. A challenge in trying to identify the optimal level of coverage for HIV legal services is determining the number or proportion of people living with HIV who are requiring legal services at any given time. This can be difficult to assess, as many people from marginalized populations may not know about their legal rights or how to claim them. This means that they may not have been demanding their legal rights in the past. When a legal 45