People with HIV could soon join the army and the gendarmerie

Gérald Darmanin has proposed an end to the exclusion in hiring HIV-positive people in the gendarmerie and fire brigade.

Towards the end of discrimination? On Thursday 4 May, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin proposed to the Minister of the Armed Forces, Sebastian Lecornuthat HIV-positive people are no longer excluded from military trafficking, he revealed Stubborn.

Therefore, they could become firefighters or gendarmes, which has long been forbidden to them. Employment discrimination based on medical criteria.

Concretely, at the time of their recruitment, military gendarmes and firefighters are assigned a health coefficient. According to the current regulations of the Ministry of the Armed Forces, HIV-positive people must have a coefficient of three to five, which automatically excludes them from employment.

Discriminatory medical criteria

“The medical criteria for aptitude for integration into the national gendarmerie or military fire brigade [à Paris et Marseille, ndlr] today they do not allow HIV-positive people to access these professions”the interior minister wrote in a letter to Sébastien Lecornu on Tuesday. This state of affairs linked to military status and the constraints it imposes, seems to have to evolve”adds Gérald Darmanin.

These medical standards are governed by the sigycop, a physical fitness assessment device used in several public service professions. This assessment, based on a score from 1 to 6, automatically classified HIV-positive people as ineligible.

Read also: What is the serophobiadiscrimination against people living with HIV?

As of the end of November 2022, this discrimination had already been lifted for the police. But until now the Ministry of the Armed Forces, whose health service regulates the recruitment of military gendarmes and firefighters, had always refused to amend the Sigycop. Gérald Darmanain wants the Minister of the Armed Forces to launch ” very quickly […] the work that will allow these recruitments to be implemented in the very short term”, asking the Minister of the Armed Forces a “Fast Return” about this.