Community-led resource distils more than 30 years of global experience into practical action for advocates, policymakers and justice systems
The HIV Justice Network (HJN), on behalf of HIV JUSTICE WORLDWIDE (HJWW) and the Global Partnership for Action to Eliminate All Forms of HIV-related Stigma and Discrimination, today launched the Guidance on Good Practices in HIV Decriminalisation during a packed Global Village session at the 26th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2026) in Rio de Janeiro.
Supported by UNAIDS, the Guidance is the first practical global resource to bring together more than three decades of community leadership, human rights standards, contemporary HIV science and real-world experience of advocacy, litigation and law reform into a single framework for action.
Opening the session, HJN Executive Director Edwin J Bernard described the Guidance as “a practical resource that we hope communities, advocates, lawyers, judges, policymakers and public health officials will actually use.”
Rather than presenting the publication chapter by chapter, the session demonstrated how it can support change in diverse legal and political contexts around the world.
Speakers included Janet Butler McPhee (HIV Legal Network), Svitlana Moroz (Eurasian Women’s Network on AIDS), Immaculate Owomugisha Bazare (Centre for Women Justice Uganda) and Sofía Várguez Villanueva (HIV Justice Network), who shared examples of community advocacy, legal reform, strategic litigation, work in restrictive legal environments and practical advocacy tools.
Although more than 80 countries continue to maintain HIV-specific criminal laws and prosecutions also occur under general criminal laws, the Guidance reflects growing evidence that communities can successfully challenge punitive approaches. Around the world, advocates have helped repeal or modernise laws, influenced courts and prosecutors to apply contemporary HIV science, and promoted rights-based public health responses.
“The HIV justice movement has reached an important milestone,” Bernard said. “For the first time, we’ve accumulated enough experience from around the world to identify what good practice actually looks like. This Guidance brings together what communities have learned over decades, so others don’t have to start from scratch.”
Designed for advocates, lawyers, judges, prosecutors, policymakers, public health officials and community organisations, the Guidance recognises that every country starts from a different place and that reform is rarely linear. Rather than prescribing a single model, it offers practical approaches that can be adapted to different legal, political and cultural contexts.
