A/HRC/37/74 that international organizations keep putting pressure on States to adopt systemic human rights-based responses to public health crises. 27. The representative of Brazil delivered the statement of the Director of the department for sexually transmitted infection, HIV/AIDS and viral hepatitis of the Brazilian Ministry of Health, Adele Benzaken, explaining how health policies, particularly the management of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, had been democratized and highlighting the importance of community participation in ensuring effective strategies to fight epidemics and realize human rights. 28. During the interactive dialogue, representatives of Islamic Republic of Iran, WHO, the Association for Human Rights in Kurdistan of Iran-Geneva, the Global Forum on MSM & HIV, the University College of Social Work at Geneva, the Stop TB Partnership, the UNAIDS Global Reference Group on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights, the World Social Forum and the Zero TB Initiative, Ulaanbaatar took the floor. Speakers addressed challenges faced by specific groups, including drug users, ethnic minorities and adolescents. The overlapping of those conditions aggravated marginalization in access to health. Speakers also referred to the challenges faced in accessing medicines due to high costs, and the shrinking civic space in countries where epidemics were widespread. One participant emphasized the importance of finding ways to ensure that the economy addressed social needs, including by maintaining universal health and social assistance systems. Another participant emphasized the adverse impact of unilateral coercive measures and sanctions on the enjoyment of the right to health in the countries affected by those measures. Participants inquired about the role of civil society in collecting disaggregated data concerning diseases and the role of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in promoting the right to health in the context of communicable diseases. The representative of OHCHR described its permanent cooperation with UNAIDS through, for example, publications on HIV and human rights aimed at different readerships. 29. In response, Ms. Sprague said that affected populations had to claim their rights to affordable treatment and forge alliances in order to achieve a power balance with pharmaceutical companies. She called on the Human Rights Council to push for a framework that would enable access to affordable treatment. She also called on stakeholders to continue to push for and support space for civil society. Mr. Esom emphasized that the Sustainable Development Goals were an opportunity to adopt an intersectional approach to health and deliver social justice. He urged participants to join forces and set up communities to tackle an economy that sustains epidemics. He drew attention to the human rights of indigenous peoples, people in prisons and migrants. Ms. Martínez Coral called for the progressive realization of the right to access to medicines. Specific epidemics had provided lessons learned in terms of the need for comprehensive, differentiated and intersectoral responses to broad human rights challenges. E. Communities leading programmes for health 30. The Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Liaison Office in Geneva, Marilena Viviani, said that adolescents were the only age group in which deaths due to AIDS were not decreasing. Adolescents required prevention through regular HIV testing that was easy to access, condoms, comprehensive sex education and high-quality targeted social welfare and protection services. However, stigma, discrimination, fear and ignorance undermined the success of those measures. New approaches based on the rights of the child were needed. Children’s freedom of expression included the freedom to seek and receive information or ideas, thus protecting the right to self-determination. Community-based organizations were the most effective and reliable sources of information for young people. UNICEF had therefore partnered with communities, as illustrated in its cash transfers in sub-Saharan African countries, including Malawi and Tanzania, and its delivery of health services to eastern Ukraine. 31. The General Secretary of the Swaziland Migrant Mineworkers Association, Vama Jele, explained how many migrant mineworkers were recruited while healthy and were 9