This issue brief shares lessons and reflections on the role of the judiciary in advancing rights-based HIV responses, to inform the implementation of key commitments in the 2021 Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS and the Global AIDS Strategy. These include an understanding of the critical nature of judicial decisions in shaping the HIV-related legal environment; the important legal implications of evolving HIV science; sensitizing judges to people’s lived experiences is key; and safe spaces for respectful discussion and learning among justice sector peers.
Issue Brief #1: Enabling Legal Environments, Including Decriminalization for HIV Responses
This issue brief shares lessons and reflections on enabling legal environments, including decriminalisation, to inform the implementation of key commitments in the 2021 Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS and the Global AIDS Strategy. These include a shared understanding of the harms caused by the overly broad and unjust application of criminal laws; sensitization of key stakeholders and their engagement in legal review processes; A well-informed judiciary; Coordinated, multi-pronged and multisectoral legal advocacy; and, global and regional advocacy to advance national-level changes to HIV-related punitive and discriminatory laws, including decriminalization.
The System Is Broken – Audit of Australia’s Mandatory Testing Laws
Audit, led by Sally Cameron, HIV Justice Network’s Senior Policy Analyst, on behalf of HJN and the National Association of People with HIV Australia (NAPWHA) revealing that mandatory testing laws are at odds with national HIV testing policy and are operating outside the structured and highly successful HIV responses managed by clinicians and departments of health. The audit found that in many instances, the laws, their implementation, and monitoring include numerous structural failures, usually occurring in multiple states.
Criminalisation of HIV Non-Disclosure, Exposure and Transmission: Scientific, Medical, Legal and Human Rights Issues
This paper was commissioned by the UNAIDS Secretariat to serve as a background paper for the Expert Meeting on Criminalisation of HIV Non-Disclosure, Exposure and Transmission, 31 August – 2 September 2011, Geneva, Switzerland. It synthesises general considerations concerning issues raised by the application of the criminal law to non-disclosure, exposure or transmission in relation to HIV Scientific, Medical, Legal and Human Rights Issues.
Criminalisation of HIV Non-Disclosure, Exposure and Transmission: Background and Current Landscape
This paper was commissioned by the UNAIDS Secretariat to serve as a background paper for the Expert Meeting on Criminalisation of HIV Non-Disclosure, Exposure and Transmission, 31 August – 2 September 2011, Geneva, Switzerland.
HIV Forensics II – Estimating the likelihood of recent HIV infection — implications for criminal prosecution
Considers the validity and meaning of scientific tests (Recent Infection Testing Algorithm) to estimate the likelihood of a recent infection in persons diagnosed as HIV positive in the context of prosecutions for HIV transmission.
The use of phylogenetic analysis as evidence in criminal investigation of HIV transmission
Aimed at professionals working in the criminal justice system and those who may be called as expert witnesses in criminal trials, the briefing explains how phylogenetic analysis should and should not be used in criminal trials for the reckless transmission of HIV.
HIV, Crime and the Law in Australia: Options for Policy Reform – a law reform advocacy kit
Divided into two sections, section two is an advocacy kit (pages 14-19). Includes possible actions to enable the development of better laws and policies, and improved practices on the part of the agencies enforcing existing laws.