New Zealand: New research reveals how HIV criminalisation is experienced in Aotearoa

HIV decriminalisation in Aotearoa: Survey findings

For the first time in Aotearoa New Zealand, we have national evidence on how HIV criminalisation is experienced by people living with HIV.

This research captures the voices of 247 people from diverse communities across the country. It documents how criminal law, public health processes, stigma, and modern HIV science intersect in real life. The project was undertaken collaboratively by Positive Women Inc, Burnett Foundation Aotearoa, Body Positive, and Toitū te Ao, reflecting the shared commitment of all four organisations to amplifying community experiences and informing meaningful change.

The findings highlight the need for greater clarity, alignment with contemporary science, and thoughtful public conversation.

About the research

This study explores:

Awareness and understanding of criminal and public health law
Attitudes toward HIV criminalisation
The lived impact of legal uncertainty
The role of stigma in shaping legal and social outcomes
Recommendations informed by participant experience

Participants represented a wide range of ages, genders, sexualities, ethnicities, migration histories, and lengths of time living with HIV.

This research centers lived experience while grounding analysis in contemporary HIV science, including the evidence behind U=U (Undetectable = Untransmittable).

Key findings

1. Preference for public health management

Most participants would prefer public health manage their HIV transmission rather than the police – because HIV is a health issue, not a crime.

2. Attitudes are nuanced

Participants held diverse and layered views about criminalisation. Support was often linked to cases of intentional harm, while broader criminalisation raised concerns about fairness, stigma, and unintended consequences.

3. Impact extends beyond prosecutions

Even where prosecutions are rare, the possibility of criminalisation shapes behaviour, disclosure practices, relationships, and wellbeing.

4. Stigma remains central

Legal frameworks do not exist in isolation. Participants described how stigma around HIV influences both public perception and perceived legal risk.

Why this matters

Effective HIV responses must reflect:

Modern treatment science
Public health best practice
Human rights principles
The lived experience of people living with HIV

Clear, evidence-informed discussion is essential to ensuring legal and policy settings support – rather than undermine – public health outcomes.

Recommendations

The report identifies areas for consideration, including:

Clearer, accessible legal guidance
Greater alignment between law and contemporary HIV science
Stigma reduction through public education
Meaningful involvement of people living with HIV in future policy conversations

What happens next

Positive Women Inc, Burnett Foundation Aotearoa, Body Positive, and Toitū te Ao will:

Share these findings across health, legal, and policy sectors
Engage stakeholders in informed discussion
Continue centering lived experience in advocacy and education
Support accurate public understanding of HIV and the law

This report is a foundation for evidence-based dialogue in Aotearoa.

For media enquiries, contact Kirk Serpes at kirk.serpes@burnettfoundation.org.nz

Read the full report here

New Zealand: Undetectable yet prosecutable, study highlights the need for law reform

Momentum for change on HIV criminalisation

A study of people living with HIV has revealed that despite advances in HIV treatment, criminalisation continues to create uncertainty and distress, with 60% of people living with HIV fearing legal consequences and many avoiding relationships altogether.

The full study and its findings will be released at a public event on 27 February at 3 pm at the Ellen Melville Centre in Auckland, by Positive Women, Body Positive, Toitū te Ao and Burnett Foundation Aotearoa.

The study surveying 247 people living with HIV in New Zealand, highlights the urgent need for rules and practice to align with modern HIV science. Over half of participants reported anxiety about legal consequences, particularly around disclosing HIV or discussing sexual practices with healthcare service providers.

“This shows that people living with HIV want to see HIV transmission managed by Public Health authorities, and not the Police. We have one of the highest rates of HIV criminalisation per capita globally, with at least 14 prosecutions since 1993,” says Liz Gibbs CEO of Burnett Foundation Aotearoa.

“The Government’s decision to sign the U=U Call to Action at Big Gay Out 2026 is a great first step in bringing New Zealand into line with overseas best practices on how to manage HIV.”

U = U stands for Undetectable = Untransmittable (U=U). It means that a person living with HIV who is on effective treatment and maintains an undetectable viral load cannot transmit HIV to sexual partner(s).

“Currently people living with HIV may face prosecution under the Crimes Act for HIV non-disclosure to their sexual partners (unless they are using a condom), even if they are on treatment with an undetectable viral load and therefore pose zero risk of transmission,” says Gibbs.

New global data reveals rising HIV criminalisation amid stalling legal reforms

The HIV Justice Network published new data this week showing a troubling rise in the number of people criminalised for HIV non-disclosure, potential or perceived exposure, or unintentional transmission in 2024 and the first half of 2025. As legal reforms appear to be stalling, discriminatory prosecutions, harsh sentences, and misuse of outdated laws continue to impact people with HIV and the HIV response.

The figures, presented at the 13h IAS Conference on HIV Science (IAS 2025) in Kigali, Rwanda, are drawn from the Global HIV Criminalisation Database. The database documents criminal cases and legal developments involving HIV-specific or general criminal laws worldwide.

In 2024, at least 65 HIV criminalisation cases were reported across 22 countries – up from 57 in 2023 and 50 in 2022. Russia (25 cases) and the United States (11) led the global tally, followed by Uzbekistan, Spain, Argentina, Belarus, Senegal, and Singapore. For the first time, prosecutions were documented in Panama and Uruguay.

The upward trend continued into 2025, with 48 cases reported in just the first six months. Uzbekistan (28) and Russia (9) again accounted for the majority, alongside new cases in the U.S., Canada, and Argentina. However, the actual number of cases is likely much higher, particularly in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the United States, where civil society organisations report many cases go undocumented.

“These cases show that HIV criminalisation remains a global crisis,” said Edwin J. Bernard, Executive Director of the HIV Justice Network. “Far too often, people living with HIV are prosecuted not for causing harm, but simply for living with a health condition – often in ways that are unscientific, discriminatory, and deeply unjust.”

Download the poster by clicking on the image

The report highlights the intersection of HIV criminalisation with racism, homophobia, gender-based discrimination, and systemic inequality. In Senegal, for example, prosecutions have disproportionately targeted LGBTQ+ individuals. In the U.S., criminal laws continue to be weaponised against communities of colour, even in cases involving no risk of transmission – such as spitting, or sex with an undetectable viral load.

One of the most alarming cases occurred in South Africa, where a former soldier was sentenced to life plus ten years for rape and attempted murder after failing to disclose his HIV status to a consenting partner – despite no evidence of intent or actual transmission. Advocates warn that such cases equate HIV non-disclosure with sexual violence and undermine decades of public health and human rights gains.

Yet, amidst the setbacks, 2024/2025 also brought some signs of hope. Maryland and North Dakota fully repealed their HIV-specific laws, while Tennessee removed mandatory sex offender registration for HIV-related convictions. Mexico City and Colima repealed vague “danger of contagion” laws, and Ukraine’s parliament voted to remove HIV from its criminal code.

In Zimbabwe, community activism helped block a proposal to re-criminalise HIV transmission. However, a new law was introduced criminalising the deliberate transmission of STIs to children, including HIV – raising fears it could be used against mothers living with HIV, particularly in breastfeeding cases.

Despite these advances, HIV criminalisation remains widespread. A total of 83 countries still have HIV-specific laws, and 23 countries reported prosecutions in this period using either HIV-specific or general laws. The HIV Justice Network warns that without urgent action, the world is unlikely to meet UNAIDS’ target of reducing punitive laws to below 10% of countries by 2030.

“The path forward must be rooted in science, rights, and community leadership,” Bernard said. “We must end laws that punish people for their status, and instead build legal systems that support health, dignity, and justice.”

EPO622 Recent progress and setbacks in HIV criminalisation around the world by Edwin J Bernard, Sylvie Beaumont, and Elliot Hatt was presented at IAS 2025 by Paul Kidd at 13th IAS Conference on HIV Science in Kigali, Rwanda.

New case study and documentary examines how Zimbabwe repealed its HIV criminalisation law

Today, the HIV Justice Network (HJN), supported by the International AIDS Society (IAS), released a video documentary, “It is Time!” – How Zimbabwe Decriminalised HIV, along with a case study report examining Zimbabwe’s successful repeal of its HIV-specific criminal law.

The report, Reforming the Criminal Law in Zimbabwe: A Case Study, explores how advocates, legal experts, and community leaders worked together to repeal Section 79 of Zimbabwe’s Criminal Code, which criminalised HIV non-disclosure, exposure, or transmission. It outlines key strategies used in the campaign and lessons for other countries seeking to end HIV criminalisation.

The 24-minute documentary “It is Time!” brings this story to life through interviews with those involved in the multi-year effort. It also explores how advocates responded when a new law threatened to reintroduce HIV criminalisation.

Zimbabwe’s experience highlights several key strategies:

Coalition-building: Bringing together civil society, legal experts, and policymakers strengthened the advocacy effort.
Public health and human rights messaging: Advocates demonstrated how criminalisation undermined Zimbabwe’s HIV response.
Scientific evidence: Expert testimony helped policymakers understand the realities of HIV transmission.
Legislative strategy: Repealing Section 79 as part of a broader legal reform helped ensure success.

The documentary “It is Time!” is now available on the HIV Justice Network YouTube channel.

Reforming the Criminal Law in Zimbabwe: A Case Study (English, pdf, 9 pages) can be downloaded here.

The documentary and case study will also be added to the HIV Criminalisation Online Course, available for free as part of the HIV Justice Academy.

The case study and video were launched during a webinar co-hosted by HJN and IAS, featuring discussions on the significance of Zimbabwe’s law reform for the global movement against HIV criminalisation from:

Marlène Bras, Director of HIV Programmes at the IAS;
Dr Ruth Labode, former legislator, and chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Health in Zimbabwe;
Immaculate Owomugisha, a Ugandan lawyer and human rights activist who also sits on HJN’s Supervisory Board; and
HJN’s Senior Policy Analyst, Alison Symington.

A recording of webinar can now be viewed in English and in French on the IAS+ website.

New HIV criminalisation data at AIDS 2024

In July 2024, six members of the HIV Justice Network team travelled to Munich to take part in AIDS 2024, the 25th International AIDS Conference, which brought together more than 11,000 participants from across the world.

The daily poster exhibitions provided an opportunity to learn of the incredible work undertaken by researchers, advocates, and people living with HIV to challenge discriminatory, criminalising laws and policies that single out people living with HIV.

HJN presented five posters at the conference (click on the link to download the pdf of the poster):
• Global Trends in HIV Criminalisation
• The Relevance of Gender to Potential or Perceived HIV ‘Exposure’ Charges in HIV Criminalisation Cases
• The ABCs of HIV Law Reform in Latin America and the Caribbean: Case Studies on HIV (De)criminalisation in Argentina, Belize, and Colombia
• Challenging Coercion and Misplaced Punishment: HIV and Infant Feeding Choices; and
• Prepared for Action: Lessons Learned from the First Year of the HIV Justice Academy.

HJN’s Global Trends poster was featured during Michaela Clayton’s Wednesday morning plenary on HIV criminalisation and again during the rapporteur session prior to Friday’s closing ceremony.

There were also a number of other interesting and important poster presentations by others working on ending or limiting HIV criminalisation.

In The who and how of HIV criminalization in the United States, Nathan Cisneros from the Williams Institute – an organisation whose rigorous research has substantially advanced the understanding of the enforcement of HIV criminal laws in the US – delivered a poster drawing together several patterns identified from this groundbreaking research and highlighting the pressing need to address unjust prosecution practices. The findings demonstrate that criminalisation has occurred at a much deeper rate than previous estimates suggested that marginalised communities, notably black people, women, and sex workers, are disproportionately targeted under these laws, and that enforcement does not correlate to ‘risk’, meaning that many people are criminalised carrying no risk of transmission.

Advocates from Aotearoa (New Zealand) including the Burnett Foundation Aotearoa, presented a poster, No U-turns allowed: a roadmap to challenge criminalisation of HIV in Aotearoa New Zealand highlighting the difficulties of challenging HIV criminalisation where it occurs under general criminal laws. Given that general laws do not specifically target HIV, they do not account for HIV transmission risks and ignore modern HIV science, meaning they may be applied in cases where HIV has not, or cannot, be transmitted, as occurs in New Zealand. This poster underlined the importance of HIV-specific prosecutorial guidance to limit prosecutions, as well as other interventions including education, lobbying, and advocacy of the police, judiciary, and media.

Similarly, in Preventing overly broad criminalisation of HIV exposure, non-disclosure and transmission through multi-sector collaboration on education initiatives advocates from Queensland, Australia, highlighted the importance of working within existing legal frameworks to limit unjust prosecutions where reform of HIV criminal laws is politically challenging. This poster outlined work done by HIV organisations in Queensland to educate law enforcement on public health and human rights alternatives to HIV criminalisation, which was received positively and helps to reduce the overly broad use of criminal laws.

Several posters also examined the impacts of broader punitive legal environments on people living with HIV who are additionally criminalised due to other identities of behaviours. In the wake of anti-LGBTQ legislation in Ghana and Uganda, the latter which originally made alleged HIV transmission by gay men punishable with death, a number of posters presented at AIDS 2024 demonstrated the chilling effect of these laws, along with laws criminalising sex work, on HIV service provision for people living with HIV in Ghana and Uganda (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) with centres shutting down and individuals limiting their health-seeking behaviour due to fear of criminalisation.

This vital research demonstrates that both HIV criminalisation and broader criminalisation of key populations must end in order to achieve health, dignity and rights for all people living with HIV.

IAS 2023: Five-year impact of Expert Consensus Statement – poster published today

Today, 24th July, at the 12th IAS Conference on HIV Science on Brisbane, we presented our research findings on the five-year impact of the ‘Expert Consensus Statement on the Science of HIV in the Context of Criminal Law’.

Click on the image above to download the pdf of the poster

Tomorrow, 25th July, we will publish the full research report and discuss the findings on our live webshow, HIV Justice Live!

Hosted by HJN’s Executive Director, Edwin J Bernard, the show will include a discussion with the report’s lead author, HJN’s Senior Policy Analyst Alison Symington, as well as interviews with Malawian judge Zione Ntaba, Taiwan activist Fletcher Chui, and SALC lawyer Tambudzai Gonese-Manjonjo on the Statement’s impact.

We’ll also hear from some of the Expert Consensus Statement’s authors, including Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, Salim S Abdool Karim, Linda-Gail Bekker, Chris Beyrer, Adeeba Kamarulzaman, Benjamin Young, and Peter Godfrey-Faussett.

Ugandan lawyer and HJN Supervisory Board member Immaculate Owomugisha will also be joining us live from the IAS 2023 conference where she is serving as a rapporteur, to discuss the Statement’s relevance today.

HIV Justice Live! Episode 5: Bringing Science to Justice will be live on Facebook and YouTube on Tuesday 25^th July at 3pm CEST (click here for your local time).

Coming soon:
HIV Justice Live! Episode 5: Bringing Science to Justice

Five years ago, twenty of the world’s leading HIV scientists published the ‘Expert Consensus Statement on the Science of HIV in the Context of Criminal Law’ to address the misuse of HIV science in punitive laws and prosecutions against people living with HIV for acts related to sexual activity, biting, or spitting.

More than 70 scientists from 46 countries endorsed the Expert Consensus Statement prior to its publication in the Journal of the International AIDS Society (JIAS). The Statement was launched on 25^th July 2018 at AIDS 2018, with the press conference generating global media coverage.

Building upon our initial 2020 scoping report, we recently undertook further extensive research to examine the impact of the Expert Consensus Statement in the five years since its publication.

On 25^th July 2023 – exactly five years to the day of the original launch – we will not only be presenting our findings at the 12th IAS Conference on HIV Science (IAS 2023), we will also be launching the five-year impact report during our live webshow, HIV Justice Live!

Ugandan lawyer and HJN Supervisory Board member Immaculate Owomugisha will also be joining us live from the IAS 2023 conference in Brisbane, Australia where she is serving as a rapporteur, to discuss the Statement’s legacy and relevance today.

There will be opportunities to let us know the impact the Expert Consensus Statement has had in your advocacy and to ask questions live, so please save the date and time.

HIV Justice Live! Episode 5: Bringing Science to Justice will be live on our Facebook and YouTube pages on Tuesday 25^th July at 3pm CEST (click here for your local time).

Thought-provoking new report from Canada on alternatives to HIV criminalisation

This week, our close partners in the HIV JUSTICE WORLDWIDE coalition, the Canadian-based HIV Legal Network, published a thought-provoking new report, A gender-centred dialogue on alternative justice responses to HIV non-disclosure criminalization in English and French.

Whilst the report focuses on the specifics of the Canadian situation, it provides for provocative and stimulating reading that should inspire all of us working to end HIV criminalisation and other punitive approaches to HIV prevention.

Funded by Women and Gender Equality (WAGE) Canada, the brief synthesises and builds upon the roundtable that was co-hosted by the HIV Legal Network with the Women & HIV/AIDS Initiative (WHAI) and Communities, Alliances & Networks (CAAN) in June 2022.

The objective of the roundtable was to gather cross-sector perspectives about whether an alternative justice approach is warranted or appropriate in situations of HIV non-disclosure.

Given the unique legal situation in Canada, where HIV non-disclosure is prosecuted as sexual assault, and given the interaction between HIV criminalisation, disclosure, and gender – including the risks of gender-based violence and gendered power dynamics – the discussions were grounded in gender-centred considerations.

Since most alternative justice responses focus on repairing the harm caused by an individual and include holding people accountable for their actions, the roundtable and the report raised questions around applying the notions of “harms” or “wrongdoing” to HIV non-disclosure.

Is HIV non-disclosure a harm in and of itself? Or does it depend on the circumstances and characteristics of the involved parties?

Given its harmful impacts, there was a consensus among participants that the criminal law is not the appropriate instrument to respond to HIV non-disclosure.

To respond to the needs of people who experience non-disclosure and account for the realities of women and gender-diverse people including those living with HIV, roundtable participants discussed potential alternative responses, including restorative and transformative justice models.

The roundtable and the report also focused on community-based alternatives to the criminal legal system, notably how to foster collaboration between the HIV sector, the sexual assault and gender-based violence sector, and alternative justice organisations.

Three main themes on alternative community-based interventions emerged from the roundtable:

1. Creating enabling environments for positive and healthy sexuality and sexual relationships.

2. Delivering dynamic, non-shame-based, responses to situations of non-disclosure that depend on the needs of the parties and communities involved.

3. Recognising that an alternative justice approach to HIV non-disclosure must be one that transforms the conditions that lead to increased HIV vulnerability and experiences of violence and criminalisation, all of which must be grounded in an anti-racist and anti-colonial approach.

The report concludes that the current state of HIV criminalisation is untenable and fails to promote “justice” for anyone involved. It ends with a number of recommendations from the HIV Legal Network aimed at the federal government, public health departments, and HIV-impacted communities that primarily focus on creating a supportive, enabling environment for HIV prevention, treatment, care and support.

You can find A gender-centred dialogue on alternative justice responses to HIV non-disclosure criminalization in the English and French versions of the Resource Library of the HIV Justice Academy, as well as on the HIV Legal Network‘s website.

Russia: Most HIV clinicians support HIV criminalisation

A sobering new study from Russia undertaken by the Eurasian Women’s Network on AIDS (EWNA) has found that the majority of HIV clinicians surveyed support HIV criminalisation, with some even believing the current law should be stricter. Those who said they support decriminalisation tended to work at private clinics and were more likely not to question the HIV prevention benefit of antiretroviral therapy.

The study, Attitudes of infectious disease doctors and epidemiologists at AIDS centres towards the criminalization of HIV in the Russian Federation was published in Russian this week by EWNA with financial support from the Robert Carr Fund.

Last year, EWNA undertook an online survey to examine the attitudes of infectious disease specialists and epidemiologists working at state-run AIDS prevention and control centres, as well as other HIV clinicians, towards HIV criminalisation in Russia. They received 186 responses, of which 22 were excluded due the respondents not being HIV clinicians, and 164 responses were analysed.

Of all respondents, 50 (30.5%) worked in AIDS centres, 46 (28%) in hospitals, 34 (27%) in polyclinics, 33 (20.1%) in private clinics and 1 (0.6%) in a clinical diagnostic department. The doctors had been qualified for an average of 13.5 years, with an average 5 years’ experience in the HIV field, and saw, on average, 16 HIV patients a day. The majority worked in cities with a population of more than a million people.

A total of 115 (70.1%) respondents were aware of the content of Russia’s HIV-specific criminal law – ‘Article 122: Infection with HIV’. Infectious disease doctors and epidemiologists were more familiar with the law than doctors in other specialties, and the same was true of AIDS centre staff compared with staff at other medical institutions.

Those who were unaware of the law were provided with a brief overview of its contents before continuing the survey. You can read the full text of the law, and our analysis of its impact, at HJN’s Global HIV Criminalisation Database.

Of all the doctors surveyed, 23 (14%) reported that their patients had been prosecuted under the law, and eleven (6.7%) respondents had given evidence in court.

Most HIV clinicians surveyed supported HIV criminalisation with only a minority agreeing that the law should be completely repealed (23%), reclassified as an administrative offence (15%) or remain as is but with reduced penalties (7%).

Those working in infectious diseases or epidemiology and/or employees of state-run AIDS centres were more likely than doctors of other professions or working in private clinics to argue for a stricter law. Conversely, employees of private fee-paying clinics were more likely to be in favour of reclassifying the law as an administrative offence or abolishing the law altogether.

Notably, respondents in favour of decriminalisation were more likely to say that they were open to having a relationship with a person living with HIV.

The clinicians were also asked about their understanding of the concept of ‘Undetectable equals untransmittable’ (U=U). Only 37% wholeheartedly agreed with the concept, with another 35% agreeing but with certain caveats. Respondents opposing HIV decriminalisation more often than others considered the U=U principle to be wrong, or considered it to be generally correct, but with caveats. Of note, a recently published study found that across Russia only 45% of people with HIV currently receive antiretroviral therapy.

Russia continues to be one of most aggressive enforcers of HIV criminalisation globally with a very high number of unjust arrests, investigations and prosecutions reported each year. The study results suggest that much more work needs to be done to educate HIV clinicians about the harms of HIV criminalisation to both public health and human rights, as well as the unequivocable benefits of HIV treatment on both health and prevention.

The original Russian-language report and the machine translated English version can be found in the Resource Library of the HIV Justice Academy.

So many harms, so little benefit: a global review of the history and harms of HIV criminalisation

Last week, The Lancet HIV published an important new advocacy resource – a global review of the history and harms of HIV criminalisation.

So many harms, so little benefit: a global review of the history and harms of HIV criminalisation was co-authored by Joanne Csete (Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health), Richard Elliott (former executive director of the HIV Legal Network and current chair of our Supervisory Board), and Edwin J Bernard (HJN’s executive director and global co-ordinator of HIV JUSTICE WORLDWIDE).

The review summarises key developments in the history of HIV criminalisation and highlights newer research – from the last decade but especially from the last five years – on the public health and human rights impact of HIV criminalisation.

It also summarises expert guidance on the subject, especially as it reflects evolving science, also noting the health and human rights concerns about the application of phylogenetic analysis for molecular surveillance data in the context of HIV criminalisation.

It also explores the impact of HIV criminalisation on different populations – women, sex workers, gay and bisexual men and other men who have sex with men, Indigenous persons, immigrants and racial minorities.

Finally, it reviews recent significant efforts to limit the impact of HIV criminalisation most of which would have been impossible without advocacy organisations of people living with HIV and their allies.

The review concludes that HIV criminalisation…

“is inconsistent with the human rights-based response to HIV espoused in UN strategies for decades. It adds to the legal and societal burden faced by those who experience discrimination based on race, class, gender, sexual orientation and immigration status as well as criminalization of other kinds. It is enabled by laws and a criminal legal system that in many cases have not caught up with the science of HIV, deploying the machinery of the criminal law as a response to conduct posing little or even no risk of transmission. It punishes people harshly even in cases where no bodily harm can be discerned and where there has been no intent to cause harm – indeed, even in some cases where people have actively sought to eliminate or reduce the risk of others acquiring the virus. It reinforces HIV-related stigma and can discourage people from seeking health services. It is a vehicle for the misuse of phylogenetic evidence and the public health apparatus of molecular surveillance.

“Any benefits of HIV criminalization, which are hard to discern from existing research, must be weighed against the enormous costs of deepening stigma and fear among people living with HIV and of incarceration, coercion and blackmail, police investigation, criminal proceedings, media hysteria, and saddling people with criminal records, sex offender status, or deportation. The myth that HIV criminalization protects women from predatory men should give way to investment in proven measures to address gender-based poverty, violence and discrimination. Financial support for the work of networks of people living with HIV in low- and middle-income countries to document HIV criminal laws and their impact would be useful.

“At a time of reckoning on race in global health, it behooves governments to review, reform and repeal laws that exacerbate the harm that centuries of White colonialism have visited upon racial minorities and Indigenous people. Significantly reducing HIV among sex workers, people who use drugs, criminalized LGBTQI persons, migrants and prisoners remains central to the Global AIDS Strategy and would be helped by eliminating HIV criminalization. And in a time of emerging infectious diseases, HIV criminalization sets a dangerous precedent. The few but dramatic cases of attempted murder charges that have been brought for alleged HIV transmission in the context of rape in South Africa were the closest precedent for attempted murder charges brought against two men who refused quarantine after having tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in 2020. The demonization of COVID-19 “carriers” in too many countries is at least partly a shameful legacy of HIV criminalization.”