News by the HIV Justice Network

The ongoing case of Rosemary Namubiru, the Ugandan nurse accused of exposing a child to HIV during the course of administering an injection, is highlighted in a powerful press release issued yesterday by AIDS Free World.  Fortunately, Ms Namubiru is…

A new publication from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), written by Veronica Oakeshott, is an excellent new resource to help inform advocacy efforts to remove punitive laws and policies that impede the HIV response. Aimed…

A newly published report suggests a number of concrete ways that research into the impact of overly broad HIV criminalisation on public health can move the policy agenda forward, and help reform laws and create better policies for people living…

On December 19th, the United States Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act (fiscal year 2014) which, according to a press release from the Sero Project, “is a significant first step toward reforming the military’s HIV-related policies, and is the…

The African continent has more countries with overly broad and vague HIV-specific laws relating to HIV non-disclosure, exposure and/or transmission than any other global region, nearly all of which have been enacted in the past decade. Although North America is…

The events documented in Zoe Mavroudi’s powerful documentary, Ruins – now available to watch in full online with a choice of English, Finnish, French, German, Polish, Spanish and Swedish subtitles – are a ‘perfect storm’ of problematic criminal justice responses…

Sex, Lies and HIV: When What You Don’t Tell Your Partner Is a Crime by Sergio Hernandez, Special to ProPublica, Dec. 1, 2013. This story was co-published with BuzzFeed. [Un sommaire en français est aussi disponible ici] Nick Rhoades was…

For World AIDS Day 2013, Lambda Legal created a social media campaign on Facebook and on its own blog highlighting all the different ways the overly broad HIV criminalisation laws in the United States harm public health, result in unjust…

by Cecile Kazatchkine, Senior Policy Analyst, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network On November 8 2013, the Provincial Court of Nova Scotia in Canada released a very encouraging decision in a case of HIV non-disclosure. A young man with an undetectable viral…

Today, the Court of Appeal for Skåne and Blekinge has acquitted a man from Malmö previously convicted of exposing four women to HIV on the grounds that since he had a stable undetectable viral load on antiretrovirall treatment with no…

EATG’s new position paper on prosecutions for HIV non-disclosure, exposure and/or transmission published last week recommends that the criminal law should only be used in extremely rare and unusual cases where HIV is maliciously and intentionally transmitted and that Europe-wide…

Last month a 25 year-old female sex worker – a mother of two children – who was working in Sucre and Potosí, Bolivia, was sentenced to house arrest because she continued to work after being diagnosed HIV-positive. How, the Latin…

The HIV Justice Network has today released a new documentary, More HARM Than GOOD: How overly broad HIV criminalisation is hurting public health which had its world premiere at the US Conference on AIDS in New Orleans on September 10th….

A court in Barrie, Ontario has found a woman, ‘JM’ not guilty of aggravated sexual assault for not disclosing her HIV status before her male partner performed oral sex on her. The Barrie Advance reports that Justice Gregory Mulligan… ruled…

The United States is closer than ever before in ensuring that their HIV-specific laws are reviewed and amended in order to be consistent with current medical and scientific knowledge. Earlier this week, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee passed an amendment proposed…

NAT (National AIDS Trust) is calling on all UK police forces to ensure their guidance and policies on HIV are up-to-date – and to use NAT’s new resource ‘HIV: A guide for Police Forces’ for this purpose. “HIV: A guide…

Reinstatement of controversial Health Provision slammed by HIV and Human Rights Groups, by Zoe Mavroudi [Republished from the radiobubble blog, with thanks to Zoe Mavroudi] A legal provision that led to mass arrests of HIV-positive women in Greece in 2012…

Today, the U.S. Conference of Mayors passed a resolution calling for “the elimination of HIV-specific criminal laws and implementation of approaches to HIV within the civil and criminal justice systems that are consistent with the treatment of similar health and…

A new report released today by the Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+) and the HIV Justice Network highlights the tireless work of advocates around the world challenging inappropriate criminal laws and prosecutions for HIV non-disclosure, potential or…

New guidance from UNAIDS to limit the overly broad use of criminal laws to regulate and punish people living with HIV who are accused of HIV non-disclosure, exposure and/or transmission, recommends that: Countries should develop and implement prosecutorial and police…

Today, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) publishes its long-awaited updated guidance to limit the overly broad use of criminal laws to regulate and punish people living with HIV who are accused of HIV non-disclosure, exposure and/or transmission….

A new guide which aims to address some of the realities and complexities faced by nurses and others who provide care to people living with HIV in Canada, is now available. Covering everything from record keeping, confidentiality, viral load and…

Meet Tami Haught: Iowa’s Anti-Criminalization Advocate  Tami Haught explains how, with the support of CHAIN (the Community HIV/Hepatitis Advocates of Iowa Network) and hundreds of Iowans living with HIV, she helped build a broad coalition to reform Iowa’s HIV criminalization…

Yesterday, California Congresswoman Barbara Lee (Democrat) was joined by Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Republican) to introduce a new version of the ‘Repeal Existing Policies that Encourage and Allow Legal HIV Discrimination Act’ (the ‘REPEAL HIV Discrimination Act’, or the ‘REPEAL…