Criminalization of HIV transmission and exposure

HIV is a virus not a crime

The criminal law is a blunt instrument for HIV prevention. Yet from the UK to
the USA, Mali to Mozambique, Azerbaijan to Australia, criminal laws are
increasingly being used to prosecute HIV
transmission or exposure.

This undermines human rights and jeopardizes hard won gains in the
global response to HIV.

As we approach World AIDS Day, a new publication – Verdict on a
Virus: Public Health, Human Rights and Criminal Law – shows that a
simplistic `law-and-order' response to HIV and the way in which
individual court cases are reported in the media only serves to
intensify a climate of denial, secrecy and fear.

This creates a fertile breeding ground for the continued and rapid
spread of HIV.

While the United Kingdom provides global leadership on many HIV
related issues, it has not provided a shining example in relation to
criminalization.

The media coverage of HIV criminal prosecutions in the UK has
generated headlines such as "AIDS Assassin", undermining decades of
work to reduce the stigma associated with HIV.

A total of 16 prosecutions by the Crown Prosecution Service have
taken place in the UK since 2001 – disrupting lives and damaging
public health gains.

In fact, legal standards set by many European countries do not
provide models for imitation.

Since 2005 a wave of laws criminalizing HIV transmission has swept
across Africa. In Sierra Leone, for example, this approach led to the
approval of a law that explicitly criminalizes a mother living with
HIV who exposes her fetus to the virus.

In Egypt, merely living with HIV can lead to prosecution for crimes
of `debauchery'.

"For the foreseeable future we will never have an AIDS-free world,
but because of that we should find new ways to live and to love –
becoming wiser and richer. HIV must be embraced not feared!" - Dr
Nono Simelela of the International Planned Parenthood Federation in
London.

"Today one of the most pressing issues in the AIDS epidemic is the
use of criminal statutes and criminal prosecutions against HIV
transmission. Such laws are increasingly wide in their application
and frightening in their effects. HIV is a virus, not a crime. That
fact is elementary, and all-important. Too often law-makers and
prosecutors overlook it." - Edwin Cameron, Justice of the Supreme
Court, South Africa.

Verdict on a Virus was launched on November 13 2008 at the Foreign
Press Association, 11 Carlton House Terrace, London at 10.00am.

A pdf copy of the document Verdict on a Virus: Public Health, Human
Rights and Criminal Law – is available from the following web link

http://www.ippf.org/en/Resources/Guides-
toolkits/Verdict+on+a+virus.htm

Contact at IPPF: Paul Bell
+44 (0) 20 7939 8233 or
+44 (0) 7799 335533
e-mail: pbell@...