The day after he was appointed, Greek Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis brought back in to force health regulation 39A on July 1, 2013. The regulation forces mandatory testing for HIV and other communicable diseases. It specifies certain groups like people who inject drugs, sex workers and undocumented migrants as a priority, with the argument that this is in the interest of public safety.
US: House Appropriations Committee passes amendment that would fund review of HIV-specific criminal laws
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 by Congresswoman Barbara Lee to the FY2014 Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Act that would require the Attorney General to initiate a review of Federal and State laws, policies, and regulations regarding criminal and related civil commitment cases involving people living with HIV.
This wording is very similar to the content of Lee’s REPEAL HIV Discrimination Act, which was re-introduced in May with bi-partisan support, and which currently has 32 co-sponsors.
“HIV criminalization laws breed, discrimination, distrust, and hatred. These laws are based on fear, not science. This is an important first step in ensuring that our laws reflect current scientific understandings of HIV.” notes Congresswoman Lee in a press release. This amendment passed on a voice vote as part of the manager’s amendment.
The amendment reads as follows:
Modernizing laws with respect to people living with HIV/AIDS.
The Committee is aware of the position of the President’s Advisory Council on AIDS (PACHA) that current criminal laws require modernization, should be consistent with current medical and scientific knowledge and avoid imposition of unwarranted punishment based on health and disability status. The Committee directs the Attorney General, within 90 days following enactment of this Act, to initiate a review of Federal and State laws, policies, and regulations regarding criminal and related civil commitment cases involving people living with HIV/AIDS. The Committee further directs the Attorney General, no later than 180 days from initiating the review, to make best practice recommendations to ensure such policies do not place unique or additional burdens on individuals living with HIV/AIDS and reflect contemporary understanding of HIV transmission routes and associated benefits of treatment.
The Appropriations Act (officially titled ‘S.1329 : An original bill making appropriations for Departments of Commerce and Justice, and Science, and Related Agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2014, and for other purposes’) has now been placed on Senate Legislative Calendar.
The Sero Project has issued a press release welcoming the amendment and explaining what it means for advocacy against overly-broad HIV-specific criminal laws in the United States.
Uganda: Advocates oppose mandatory HIV testing, disclosure of status to partners, of pregnant women in draft HIV law
Civil society organisations have opposed a proposal in the HIV Prevention and Control Bill providing for mandatory testing of pregnant women and others. The proposal of the coalition of civil society organisations, led by the Uganda Network on Law, Ethics and HIV/AIDS, was presented during a dialogue on the Bill with members of the Uganda Parliamentary Women Association at Protea Hotel in Kampala yesterday.
The meeting aimed at assisting the legislators in coming up with a common position on the Bill to be forwarded to the committee on HIV/AIDS under whose docket the Bill falls for onward submission to Parliament for approval. The civil society organisations and activists contended that international standards require HIV/AIDS testing to be confidential accompanied by counselling and to be conducted with voluntary and informed consent.
They further argued that mandatory testing of drug users and workers would discourage them from seeking treatment and care. The civil society organisations are also against a provision that allows a medical practitioner to disclose HIV test results without the consent of the affected person. “Mandatory disclosure obligations run the risk of deterring people, especially women, from getting tested,” they stated, arguing that where due caution is not exercised, informing a woman’s partner of her HIV status may expose her to the risk of violence, eviction, disinheritance and severe abuses.
The MPs agreed to do further consultations on the Bill and to study the law enacted by the East African Community assembly on the subject. The Bill has also been heavily criticised by international human rights organisations.
India: Advocates push for enactment of enabling, supportive omnibus HIV/AIDS Bill
“When we first started talking about the HIV/AIDS Bill, we were talking about how our children needed to be taken care of. Today, those children are adults waiting to be married, and have a different set of problems, but there is no law yet,” Daisy David, a woman living with HIV says. After about three years of preparation in consultation with many groups, the HIV/AIDS Bill took final shape in 2006 and was submitted to the Law Ministry the next year.
The Law Ministry took three years to clear it, and sent it back to the Health Ministry. Since then it has been lying idle or being foot balled between the Health and Law Ministries, activists charged. Meanwhile, the community got tired of waiting for the State to take over and do the rest. So they took to the street again, campaigning for the bill to be tabled in the coming session of the Parliament.
“It is extremely disappointing, the way this Bill has been shuttling between the two Ministries. We demand that the government should table the Bill in this monsoon session,” says Reni Jacob of World Vision. He stresses the importance of bringing into force a law that will protect the rights of persons living with HIV and offer them a forum for redress. The Bill envisaged wholesome coverage of issues relating to persons living with HIV/AIDS addressing issues of stigma and discrimination, care and protection, treatment and ensuring their rights. “We have a lot of problems now, from access to anganwadis, health care, and education, to denial of property rights. We can only keep quiet because there is no law to protect us,” Ms. David says, detailing her own experiences.
The Bill protects people living with, and affected by HIV from discrimination in both private and public sectors, bringing the private sector into the ambit for the first time, Kumaravel of the Tiruvallur Network of Positive People explains. Also, the Bill puts an obligation on the State to provide complete treatment including antiretrovirals, diagnostics, treatment for opportunistic infections, and nutritional supplements to every person living with HIV in the country, adds Noori of the South Indian Network of People with HIV/AIDS.
Surekha N of the Lawyers Collective, which originally drafted the Bill, explained that it has recently been sent to the Law Ministry.
Greece: Scientists and human rights campaigners condemn the reinstatement of Provision 39A allowing forced HIV testing of suspected sex workers, drug users and undocumented migrants
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 has been reinstated, causing widespread condemnation by local and international organizations and human rights advocates.
Provision No 39A was voted by former socialist Health Minister Andreas Loverdos in April 2012 and led to an unprecedented case of HIV criminalization a few weeks later when the Greek police in cooperation with the country’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, KEELPNO, rounded up hundreds of women from the center of Athens and force-tested them for HIV inside police stations. A total of 30 who tested positive were imprisoned on charges of felony and prostitution, in spite of a lack of significant evidence that they had been working as prostitutes or that they had infected anyone with the virus. Their mug-shots and personal data were then published upon order by a prosecutor on the Greek police website as well as on major TV channels.
The arrests prompted an international backlash against the Greek government when organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the European AIDS Treatment Group and UNAIDS called for the withdrawal of laws that enabled the targeting of HIV-positive people labeling them unproductive and in violation of international conventions.
The women were held in prison for a months-long detention period under inhumane conditions. The charges have since been dropped or reduced in the courts. After months of negotiations following Loverdos’ exit from the government and socialist PASOK party, non-governmental organizations and activist groups in Greece scored a victory in May 2013, when former Deputy Health Minister Foteini Skopouli finally repealed the provision.
The move was welcomed as a step toward correcting the damage inflicted on the country’s medical services by the 2012 arrests. Drug rehabilitation groups, which have been hit hard by austerity cuts, have repeatedly complained that the arrests had serious implications in the exercise of their outreach work among vulnerable groups.
But last Tuesday, newly-appointed health minister Adonis Georgiadis (pictured above), formerly a member of the far-right LAOS partly and currently a New Democracy majority party MP, reinstated the provision unexpectedly, the day after his swearing-in ceremony that followed a cabinet reshuffle of the country’s coalition government. In a short announcement, KEELPNO welcomed the reinstatement citing a necessity to “cover the country” until revisions to the provision were agreed on. Georgiadis addressed the reinstatement on twitter, saying the repeal by Skopouli had left a “legal void.”
But the legal grounds upon which the provision was voted into law were questionable. Last year, Loverdos signed 39A alone, in spite of a legal requirement for a minimum of four official signatures in order for a provision to be enacted into law.
At the time, he claimed that its content had originated in a 1940 regulation, which allowed for sanitation measures in public places for the protection of public health. However, new language included in 39A, pointed at immigrants, homeless people, intravenous drug users and sex workers as possible sources of epidemics. 39A also cited a need to perform mandatory tests on individuals from these groups as part of controlling diseases that are currently not endemic in Greece, such as malaria, polio and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.
Greece has seen a spike in HIV infections among injecting drug users during the crisis, mostly in the country’s capital, although there is no official data on a significant rise among sex workers or undocumented immigrants. Men who have sex with men remain the main population group that suffers most of the country’s new HIV infections.
In spite of citing a need for mandatory testing, the provision is also unclear about the nature of measures that the police and health authorities should take in order to test individuals without their informed consent. A law-suit has been brought by some of the women arrested in 2012 and by Greek NGOs against police officers present in the arrests as well as KEELPNO doctors for sharing test results with the police and violating patient confidentiality.
Calls to take back the measure came from abroad almost immediately after the reinstatement was announced. In her closing speech at the annual convention of the International Aids Society in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday, French Nobelist Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, the scientist accredited with co-discovering the HIV virus, expressed her “strong disappointment.”
“As President of the IAS I strongly condemn this move and urge the Greek Government to rethink its position. HIV infections are already increasing in Greece due to the economic crisis and a mandatory policy of detainment and testing will only fuel the epidemic there.” Barré-Sinoussi added: “As we keep repeating over the years, there will be no end to the HIV epidemic without advancing human rights in parallel.”
Sinoussi’s concerns were echoed in a damning announcement by Human Rights Watch, which called the reinstatement “a big step backward for human rights and public health.“
“Addressing infectious diseases such as HIV, hepatitis, and tuberculosis requires investing in health services, not calling the police. If the government is serious about addressing HIV and other infectious diseases, it should focus on access to health care and public information,” wrote HRW in a statement earlier this week. “Any detention for public health reasons must have a lawful basis, be demonstrably necessary and proportionate, and be nondiscriminatory. Anyone detained, irrespective of the grounds, is entitled to guarantees of due process.”
On their part, local Greek NGOs and human rights initiatives saw the reinstatement as a betrayal of their year-long battle for its repeal. HIV NGOs and LGBT and human rights initiatives chided the new leadership in a joint statement, for ignoring the unanimous decision that prompted its repeal as well as the recent report by the Greek Ombudsman citing the provision’s unconstitutionality.
“We cannot allow the implementation of practices that lead our society to the Middle Ages,” the statement by Positive Voice, Center for Life and Praksis, among other groups, said. “Access to free and public health services, access to medical coverage and a respect for human rights are non-negotiable for us. Since the leadership of the Health Ministry obviously does not share this view, we have a responsibility to make it clear with our actions.”
Protests against the reinstatement of 39A are continuing with a gathering outside the Ministry of Health in Athens [on Monday July 8th].
Latest update July 16th: Greek Health Minister says he will not repeal health provision that led to forced HIV tests, says he welcomes proposals.
In a Parliamentary question to Minister Georgiadis on Friday July 12, SYRIZA opposition party MP Vassiliki Katrivanou asked for a new repeal of the provision. On the same day, four Greek NGOs (Positive Voice, Praksis, Act Up Hellas and Center for Lsife) said in a joined announcement that they requested that a health committee assigned by Georgiadis with negotiating changes to the provision provide them with documentation that substantiates the urgency of the provision’s recommendations to protect public health, before they can return to the negotiations.Read more here
A new documentary produced by radiobubble about the 2012 arrests called “Ruins: Chronicle of an HIV witch-hunt,” is due for release this September. It features interviews by women who were arrested and their families. You can watch a trailer here:
GNP+ and the HIV Justice Network release ‘Advancing HIV Justice: a progress report of achievements and challenges in global advocacy against HIV criminalisation’
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 perceived exposure and transmission.
Advancing HIV Justice shows that advocates around the working to repeal, modernise or otherwise limit laws and policies that inappropriately regulate and punish people living with HIV have achieved considerable success. This is especially the case when policymakers or criminal justice system actors are open to learning more about scientific and medical advances in HIV prevention, treatment, care and support, and involve civil society – led by people living with HIV – to ensure that critical criminal law and human rights principles are followed.
“That is why we welcome the new, detailed guidance on limiting overly broad HIV criminalisation that was released last week by UNAIDS,” says Kevin Moody, International Coordinator and CEO of GNP+. “The guidance will help to continue advancing HIV justice, serving as a powerful new tool for people living with HIV, and those advocating on our behalf, in our work with policymakers and criminal justice system actors.”
Writing in the foreword, Susan Timberlake, Chief, Human Rights and Law Division, UNAIDS Secretariat, notes that Advancing HIV Justice “powerfully demonstrates that civil society advocacy on this issue is not only alive – it goes from strength to strength.”
In the 18-month period covered by the report (September 2011 to March 2013), significant advances were made in terms of:
- building the global evidence base in order to better understand the ‘who, what, where, when and why’ of laws and prosecutions around the world;
- generating persuasive social science that shows exactly why overly broad HIV criminalisation does more harm than good, often achieving exactly the opposite of what law- and policymakers intend in terms of public health and human rights;
- challenging inappropriate or overly broad new laws in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and the United States;
- advocating for law reform in Europe and the United States, including successful repeal in Denmark and modernisation of one of Switzerland’s two laws used to prosecute potential or perceived HIV exposure; and
- addressing legal processes and enforcement, including the creation of prosecutorial guidelines in Scotland.
However, the report also highlights that the road to law and policy reform is not always straightforward or easy, due not only to complex intersections of laws, policies and practices, but also because of each country’s unique social, epidemiological and cultural contexts.
“Despite the many incremental successes of the past 18 months, more work and more funding is required to strengthen advocacy capacity,” says the HIV Justice Network’s co-ordinator, Edwin J Bernard, who co-authored the report with Sally Cameron. “HIV criminalisation is a complex issue. It entails a detailed understanding of diverse aspects of the criminal justice system; collection and analysis of evidence of the scope and impact of prosecutions across local and national boundaries; articulation and argument about complex moral and ethical issues of trust, blame and responsibility; and inclusion of HIV prevention and human rights priorities. Development of strategies against HIV criminalisation relevant to each individual jurisdiction requires time, effort, and the involvement of multidisciplinary experts.”
Advancing HIV Justice: A progress report of achievements and challenges in global advocacy against HIV criminalisation is available as a 52 page pdf that can be read or downloaded at: http://www.advancing.hivjustice.net
Canada: HIV groups upset because attorney general has no plans to consult them on prosecutorial guidelines
The Ontario government is writing guidelines for criminal prosecutions of HIV-positive people who don’t disclose their status before having sex, according to the Ministry of the Attorney General.
Positive Women: Exposing Injustice
(45 min, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Canada, 2012)
Positive Women: Exposing Injustice is a 45-minute documentary film that tells the personal stories of four women living with HIV in Canada — a Quebecker who was charged for not telling her partner that she had HIV at the beginning of an ultimately abusive relationship, a young woman who chose not to pursue charges against the man who infected her, an Aboriginal woman who has personally faced extreme stigma and threats, and a Latina woman who describes the challenges of disclosure and intimate relationships for women living with HIV. Their stories are real, raw and from the heart, and tell the truth about what it’s like to live in a society that all-too-often criminalizes intimate behaviour between consenting adults and discriminates against those living with HIV. Legal experts, doctors, counsellors and support workers also lend their voices to challenge current Canadian laws that are letting down the very women they are meant to protect.
Produced and Directed by Alison Duke
Directors of Cinematography: Kim Derko and Robin Bain
Camera: Sean Black and Richard Chong
Composer and Sound Mixing: Derek Brin
Editor: Eugene Weis
Co-producers: Janet Butler-Mcphee, Cécile Kazatchkine and Alison Symington
Executive Producer: Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network
Kenya: Advocates lobby to repeal HIV-specific law criminalising non-disclosure/'exposure'
SOME activists want a section of HIV/Aids Prevention and Control Act that criminalise willing infection of a person with the virus to be repealed. The activists said section 22-24 which say a person who is aware of being infected with HIV shall be prosecuted, a move they say will increase infection rate in the country.
Canada: Demand Ontario's Attorney General develop prosecutorial guidelines with input from the Ontario Working Group on Criminal Law and HIV Exposure
Over the past two and a half years, you signed on to our campaign calling on the Attorney General to create prosecutorial guidelines to stop unjust prosecutions for HIV non-disclosure in Ontario. It worked. Earlier this month, the Ministry of the Attorney General (MAG) finally told us that they are “currently developing guidance for Crown counsel” and that the guidelines “should be finalized by the fall [of 2013].”
However, we can’t celebrate this news because MAG has made it clear that they are unwilling to meet with us to discuss the content of the guidelines. We are very concerned. Given the 2012 Supreme Court decisions that made the law less evidence-based and harsher, it is more important than ever that MAG meaningfully engages with CLHE on the content of the guidelines. The guidelines must be informed by current medical and scientific knowledge about HIV and the social contexts of living with HIV.
Sign our petition to Premier Wynne and the Attorney General. We are demanding an in-person meeting to discuss the content of the prosecutorial guidelines. The campaign for justice needs your support now more than ever.