More than 7,200 Romanian children and youth between age fifteen and nineteen are living with HIV—the largest such group in any European country. They are Romania’s miracle children, the survivors among the more than 10,000 children infected with HIV between 1986 and 1991 in hospitals and orphanages as a direct result of government policies that resulted in large numbers of children being exposed to contaminated needles and “microtransfusions” of unscreened blood. A key aspect in this medical miracle has been the early provision and progressive expansion of access to antiretroviral drugs. Romania has been rightfully praised for being the first country in Eastern Europe to provide universal access to antiretroviral therapy. But the commitment to universal access to antiretroviral therapy has not been matched by an equal commitment to combat the pervasive stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV that frequently impede their access to education, medical care, government services, and employment. Even more troubling, there is no government plan in place to ensure that the thousands of children living with HIV who are aging out of existing social protection programs have the skills and support necessary to become productive, integrated adult members of Romanian society.

Fewer than 60 percent of Romanian children living with HIV attend any form of schooling, despite legislation providing for free and compulsory education through tenth grade or until age eighteen. Romanian law bars children who are more than two years older than their grade level from attending mainstream classes, making many children living with HIV “too old” because they have fallen behind due to long periods of hospitalization or substandard educational programs in government institutions. While these children should be eligible for tutoring, distance education, or special classes to help them catch up, few such programs exist, and those that do may be inappropriate or inaccessible to children living with HIV. Those who do attend school risk ostracism, abuse, and even expulsion if their HIV status becomes known. Other children living with HIV are inappropriately relegated to special schools with inferior resources. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and children we spoke with described incidents where children living with HIV were taunted by classmates, threatened by other students’ parents, and abused by teachers. In some cases the harassment put 5 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH VOLUME 18, NO. 6(D) children’s health at risk, as when a teacher punished a child by forcing him to stand outside for hours in freezing weather, or when students and teachers left a child who had collapsed at school unattended. Children who manage to complete the eighth grade face a new set of hurdles if they wish to attend vocational programs in the cosmetology, child care, food service, and hospitality fields, where Romanian law requires mandatory HIV testing.