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The paper offers proposals for integrating understanding of and response to the pandemic into land reform-related development activities. The paper argues that in order to do so, policy-makers need to understand the overall pandemic, learn about how AIDS affects both the people whom land reform is intended to benefit and the people staffing the institutions that support land reform, and then change their understanding of how to go about it.The paper states that it is important to be aware that:more heavily affected families may become ‘invisible’ to development practitioners and that care should therefore be taken to actively seek out these groupsinstitutions that plan and implement land reform are staffed by people who may be infected and affected by HIV/AIDS and argues that care should therefore be taken to understand how this will affect organisational capacity to plan and deliver reformDrawing on the ‘sustainable livelihoods’ approach, the paper maps the affects of HIV/AIDS on human, financial, physical, social and natural capital, and finds the following implications for land reform:families badly hit by HIV/AIDS are likely to be excluded from the land reform process15 to 35% of adults who could benefit from land reform are currently HIV positive, and they will begin to fall ill with chronic illness leading to death in the next five to ten yearsmany other adults being resettled, and many of their children, will in the future become HIV positive and go on to develop AIDSIt argues that planners in the land reform process should recognise these implications and seek to achieve objectives involving a range of complimentary services in order to:maximise appropriate access, with attention to the particular needs of those infected and affected by HIV and AIDSsupport productive use in the long term, including those affected and infected by HIV and AIDSminimise HIV transmission and improve care and treatment for those who are ill, through the provision of essential servicesThe article concludes with a number of proposals for organisations working in development:learn about HIV/AIDS in more depth, perhaps getting a trained counsellor to meet all staff to help them understand HIV/AIDS and the implications this has for them personally and for their workunderstand the epidemic in the area where the organisation operates: how are local people and institutions affected, what are future trends, how are people responding, what are obvious gaps, and what are the strengths that may be built upon?review or design an internal workplace policy on HIV and AIDS, which ensures that all staff are aware of the facts; have access to information; can get confidential counselling and testing; and that anyone who is ill gets the needed support. The SADC Code of Conduct on HIV/AIDS and Employment, and national labour laws are starting pointsreview current programmes or plans for land reform or other poverty reduction strategies with two questions in mindhow is HIV/AIDS affecting the issues related to the organisation’s work, and how will it affect the situation in ten years’ time?how could the organisation’s activities increase or decrease the transmission of HIV? Is the organisation cutting out families already badly affected by HIV/AIDS? How relevant it the organisation’s work to families who have one or more HIV-positive member, or who will develop AIDS in future?carry out an internal vulnerability audit to understand how the organisation might be affected by HIV/AIDS in the future, in particular in the areas of human resources, productivity, and finances[from the author]
