HIV and the law: risks, rights and health

34 million people are living with HIV, 7,400 are newly infected daily and 1.8 million died in 2010 alone. This document argues that the legal environment (laws, enforcement and justice systems) has immense potential to better the lives of HIV-positive people and to help turn the crisis around. International law and treaties that protect equality of access to health care and prohibit discrimination - including that based on health or legal status - underpin the salutary power of national laws.

Based on an analysis of where the law could transform the AIDS response and send HIV epidemics into decline, the Commission focused its inquiry on:

• laws and practices that criminalise those living with and most vulnerable to HIV
• laws and practices that sustain or mitigate violence and discrimination against women
• laws and practices that facilitate or impede access to HIV-related treatment
• issues of law pertaining to children and young people in the context of HIV.

This document provides findings and recommendations which offer guidance to governments and international bodies in shaping laws and legal practices that are science based, pragmatic, humane
and just. The findings and recommendations also offer advocacy tools for people living with HIV, civil society, and communities affected by HIV.

Findings include:

• 123 countries have legislation to outlaw discrimination based on HIV; 112 legally protect at least some populations based on their vulnerability to HIV. But these laws are often ignored, laxly enforced or aggressively flouted.
• In over 60 countries it is a crime to expose another person to HIV or to transmit it, especially through sex. At least 600 individuals living with HIV in 24 countries have been convicted under HIV-specific or general criminal laws (due to underreporting, these estimates are conservative). Such laws do not increase safer sex practices. Instead, they discourage people from getting tested or treated, in fear of being prosecuted for passing HIV to lovers or children.
• In many countries, the law (either on the books or on the streets) dehumanises many of those at highest risk for HIV: sex workers, transgender people, men who have sex with men (MSM), people who use drugs, prisoners and migrants. Rather than providing protection, the law renders these “key populations” all the more vulnerable to HIV.
• A growing body of international trade law and the over-reach of intellectual property (IP) protections are impeding the production and distribution of low-cost generic drugs.