US: New report shows that most of Indiana’s HIV criminal laws have yet to account for decades of advances in HIV science

Indiana has six HIV criminalization laws. Most criminalize conduct that cannot transmit HIV

Indiana has six laws that criminalize people living with HIV (PLWH), spanning both the public health and criminal codes. A new report by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law evaluates whether these laws reflect current understandings of HIV science and criminalize conduct that poses negligible or no risk of transmitting HIV.

Results show that most of Indiana’s HIV criminal laws have yet to account for decades of advances in HIV science, and none are currently written with enough specificity to prevent criminalizing behaviors that have little to no risk of transmitting HIV.

In Indiana, HIV criminal laws make potential HIV exposure a crime under specific circumstances, such as sexual activity, blood or semen donation, or battery using bodily fluids, such as spitting. All of the laws were enacted between 1988 and 2002 before effective HIV treatment options were widely available and it was established that treating PLWH could prevent the transmission of HIV.

“Scientifically outdated laws work against public health goals regarding HIV testing, prevention, and treatment,” said lead author Nathan Cisneros, HIV Criminalization Project Director at the Williams Institute. “The criminalization of HIV could undermine Indiana’s efforts to end the HIV epidemic and reach the communities most impacted, including people of color, women, and LGBTQ people.”

Key Findings

None of Indiana’s laws require actual HIV transmission or the intent to transmit HIV. The laws also criminalize conduct that cannot transmit HIV, such as spitting.
Two laws criminalizing the donation of blood, plasma, or semen penalize conduct that does not transmit HIV. All bodily fluid donations are tested for HIV, and positive units are destroyed.
Two laws impose enhanced penalties for PLWH who knowingly expose another person to their bodily fluids or waste in an aggressive or malicious manner—conduct that poses no HIV transmission risk. HIV cannot be transmitted externally through contact with body fluids or waste.
Two laws that criminalize a person’s failure to disclose their HIV status have been partially modernized in recent years to reflect advances in HIV science. They limit criminal conduct to high-risk forms of sexual contact and needle sharing.
- Nevertheless, these laws fail to clarify which sexual activities are considered low or no risk and whether a person who has an undetectable viral load—and therefore cannot transmit HIV through sex—is safe from prosecution.

In recent years, public health and medical experts, including the Indiana State Medical Association, have agreed that to effectively end the HIV epidemic, it is essential to update the state’s HIV criminal laws in line with current scientific understanding of HIV. A key aspect of Indiana’s plan to significantly reduce the number of new transmissions by 2030 involves prioritizing the modernization of these laws.

This report is part of a series by the Williams Institute examining HIV criminalization in Indiana.

Read the current report

US: New report published on the enforcement of HIV criminalisation in Ohio

‘Antiquated’ and unscientific laws enforced against Ohioans living with HIV: Report

Across the country, a growing coalition of advocates is pushing to repeal or update state laws that criminalize people living with HIV or AIDS.

In Ohio, six laws on the books either criminalize certain acts – including sex – for people living with HIV or substantially increase sentences for them compared to people who do not have the virus.

Most of the laws were passed decades ago, fueled by fear, absent scientific understanding about how HIV is transmitted and before advancements in HIV-related treatment were widely introduced. Laws still remain in place in 34 states.

There are no national reporting requirements that track arrests or prosecutions under the laws. Until now, it was unclear how frequently Ohio prosecutors have charged people under the laws, which also apply to people living with hepatitis or tuberculosis.

A report released today by Equality Ohio and the Ohio Health Modernization Movement (OHMM), two groups pushing for legal reform, reveals that more than half of the prosecutions over a six-year period were for acts – such as spitting or throwing bodily fluids – that were unlikely to transmit HIV. It also found a disproportionate number of people charged were Black compared to Ohio’s overall population of Black residents.

“Ohio is unique in that these antiquated laws are actually being utilized and enforced against everyday Ohioans who are living with HIV,” Kate Mozynski, an attorney with Equality Ohio and one of the co-authors of the report told the Buckeye Flame.

In 2022, about 25,000 people in Ohio had an HIV diagnosis. The rate of Black residents diagnosed with HIV was more than six times the rate of white residents.

The groups spent three years gathering information from prosecutors and courts in all 88 Ohio counties and identified 214 cases charged under the six laws. Often, the records lacked or had conflicting information on race or ethnicity, and the gender captured in law enforcement records didn’t always reflect a person’s gender identity.

That prevents researchers from fully understanding the impact that these laws are having on some of the most vulnerable populations in Ohio, including LQBTQ+ people, people experiencing incarceration and people of color, according to the report. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that laws criminalizing HIV exposure are outdated and may discourage testing, increase stigma and exacerbate disparities in Black and Latino communities.

Cuyahoga County had the highest number of charges

The report found that:

Prosecutions are concentrated in Ohio’s more populous counties, including Cuyahoga, Hamilton, Franklin and Lucas counties.
Cuyahoga County charged four times the number of people under the six laws than Franklin County, which has a higher population and more people living with HIV and AIDS. Cuyahoga County accounted for 26% of the cases identified.
The largest share of prosecutions involved Black men, based on recorded race and gender included in records.

A separate Marshall Project review of prosecutions under the six laws in Cuyahoga County from 2016 through 2022 examined 36 charges involving 35 defendants. That doesn’t didn’t include charges for solicitation, prostitution or loitering, which are generally misdemeanor crimes.

The cases involved 18 law enforcement agencies, including three hospital police departments and public transit police.

The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s office, which decides whether to prosecute felony cases under Ohio’s laws, said these charges are determined on a “case-by-case basis” after considering input from victims, according to Lexi Bauer, communications manager. Bauer noted that the majority of the “harassment by bodily fluid” charges in recent years were related to hepatitis and not HIV.

Ohio penalties among the harshest

Ohio’s laws remain among the harshest when it comes to HIV criminalization, not just based on the conduct that is criminalized but also the penalties, said Jada Hicks, staff attorney for The Center for HIV Law and Policy.

In Ohio, people living with HIV (or viral hepatitis or tuberculosis) can be charged whether or not they:

Engaged in sex practices or other acts that could transmit the virus.
Transmitted HIV.
Used protection, such as condoms and/or dental dams.
Had an undetectable level of virus in their blood and were unable to transmit HIV.

Most of the charges examined in the report fall under two Ohio laws.

One law makes it a crime for a person living with HIV (or hepatitis or tuberculosis) to “harass” someone with their bodily fluids. That would include spitting or throwing urine, feces or blood at another person.

Under the other law, a person can be charged with felonious assault if they have sex with another person without telling them that they are living with HIV.

The penalties for failing to disclose HIV status in Ohio are stiff regardless of whether the virus was actually transmitted or whether it was even possible for a person to transmit the virus. Possible sentences for individuals living with HIV can be anywhere from two to 29 times longer than those for Ohioans who are HIV-negative.

Ohio is also one of six states that require individuals convicted under one of these statutes to register as a sex offender.

“Ohio’s HIV laws don’t require actual transmission or even the intent to transmit,” said Nathan Cisneros, a researcher with the Williams Institute, which does legal and public policy research on sexual orientation and gender identity. “Conduct that couldn’t transmit HIV – like spitting and biting, loitering while having a conversation about sex work – can land you in prison.”

The Williams Institute also published a report today that looked at arrests under Ohio’s six laws over two decades and felony prosecutions in Cuyahoga County from 2009 to 2022. Researchers identified at least 530 separate allegations under the six laws since 2000. Having consensual sex without disclosing an HIV-positive status made up nearly half of the total cases. Incidents related to sex work and bodily fluid exposure each accounted for nearly one-fifth of the total.

Changing legal landscape

Thirteen states have either repealed or modernized their HIV laws, according to the Center for HIV Law and Policy, including Illinois in 2021 and New Jersey in 2022.

Ohio advocates have been at the forefront of efforts to challenge the laws as discriminatory. In 2022, the Center for HIV Law and Policy filed a complaint with the Department of Justice on behalf of people living with HIV in Ohio and Tennessee.

In December, the DOJ notified Tennessee it was violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by enforcing the state law that increases penalties for people convicted of prostitution if they also have HIV. On Feb. 15, the Justice Department filed charges against the state in federal court..

Combing state records for HIV-related charges

OHMM researchers gathered information from county-level online court records and local county clerk and prosecutors’ offices in Ohio’s 88 counties for a six-year period ending in 2020. The project identified 214 cases prosecuted under the six laws.

Behind each one of the cases, there is a “real, everyday Ohioan who happens to have a medical condition,” Mozynski said.

Where in Ohio are people being charged?

The highest concentration of charges are in the state’s larger metropolitan areas.

26% in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland)
12% in Hamilton County (Cincinnati)
7% in Lucas County (Toledo)
7% in Franklin County (Columbus)
Montgomery (Dayton) and Warren (Lebanon) counties, about 5% each.

What charges are most common?

More than half of the cases identified were for the charge of “harassment with a bodily substance,” which carries with it a penalty of up to 5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Cases with this charge are often related to acts against law enforcement or corrections officers or healthcare workers.

Charges don’t distinguish between bodily fluids that can transmit HIV, such as blood, and those that do not, such as saliva, urine or feces. People can also be charged if they are living with hepatitis, regardless of whether it is transmitted.

Prosecutors also don’t have to prove whether a person is capable of transmitting the virus or determine whether it is scientifically impossible to transmit the virusdue to prescription-drug treatments that have reduced the presence of the virus in a person’s blood – called a viral load – to undetectable levels.

A third of the cases were for “felonious assault,” which carries the most severe penalty of any HIV-related charge – up to eight years of incarceration and a $15,000 fine. Each sexual act can be charged separately. It also doesn’t require that the virus be transmitted.

OHMM found no cases where people were charged with “selling or donating contaminated blood.” The Williams Institute found six arrests over a 20 year period related to blood donation.

Read the OHMM (“Enforcement of HIV Criminalization in Ohio: Analysis of Court Cases from 2014 to 2020”) report here.

Read the Williams report (“Enforcement of HIV Criminalization in Ohio HIV-related criminal incidents from 2000 to 2022”) here.

US: Report by the Williams Institute examines the enforcement of HIV criminalisation laws in Mississippi

HIV criminal laws lopsided impact on Black men in Mississippi

A new report by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law finds that at least 43 people in Mississippi were arrested for HIV-related crimes between 2004 and 2021. Half of all arrests in the state happened between 2017 and 2021.

The HIV epidemic and Mississippi’s HIV-related criminal laws disproportionately impact men, and Black men in particular. Men make up 49% of Mississippi’s population, 71% of people living with HIV (PLWH), and 72% of HIV-related arrests. Black men comprise 18% of the state’s population and 50% of PLWH. However, they make up 47% of HIV-related arrests.

Researchers analyzed data obtained from the Mississippi Department of Public Safety. Findings show that the enforcement of HIV criminal laws is concentrated around the state’s capital and most populous city, Jackson, and near the Gulf Coast. Almost 20% of arrests occurred in three counties: Harrison (15%), Hinds (13%), and Lamar (11%).

HIV criminalization is a term used to describe laws that either criminalize otherwise legal conduct or increase the penalties for illegal conduct based on a person’s HIV-positive status. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. states and territories currently have laws that criminalize people living with HIV.

Mississippi has two HIV criminal laws. The knowing exposure law makes it a felony to knowingly expose another person to HIV, hepatitis B, or hepatitis C and is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine. Mississippi’s endangerment by bodily substance law makes it a misdemeanor to attempt to expose or expose anyone at a correctional facility to bodily fluids. However, if someone knows their HIV or hepatitis status, the crime is upgraded to a felony punishable by 3 to 10 years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine.

“Mississippi’s criminal laws do not require the actual transmission of HIV, the intent to transmit, or even conduct that can lead to the transmission of HIV,” said lead study author Nathan Cisneros, HIV Criminalization Project Director at the Williams Institute. “We now have medical treatments that wholly eliminate the risk of transmitting HIV through sex, yet these advances are not reflected in Mississippi’s laws.”

Mississippi’s 2021 Ending the HIV Epidemic Plan called for reform of the state’s HIV criminal laws to align with modern HIV medicine.

“HIV criminal laws perpetuate stigma and can discourage testing and treatment,” said co-author Brad Sears, Founding Executive Director at the Williams Institute. “That’s why many national and state organizations, including the American Medical Association, have called for a repeal of these laws.”

This report is part of a series of reports examining the ongoing impact of state HIV criminalization laws on people living with HIV.

Read the report

US: Williams Institute publishes new report on the enforcement of HIV Criminalization in Maryland

Williams Institute report: Black people account for 82 percent of HIV criminal cases in Md.

A report the Williams Institute released on Thursday notes Black people account for 82 percent of HIV-related criminal cases in Maryland.

The report notes Black people account for 30 percent of Maryland’s population, and 71 percent of people living with HIV in the state. The Williams Institute report also indicates Black men account for 14 percent of Maryland’s population and 44 percent of people living with HIV in the state, but comprise 68 percent of people accused in HIV-related criminal cases.

The report indicates at least 104 cases and at least 148 charges of “knowingly transferring HIV to another” in Maryland from 2000-2020. Three of the 104 cases, according to the report, “alleged only attempted ‘knowing transferring HIV to another.’”

Sixty-nine percent of “enforcement of HIV criminal laws” in Maryland happened in three jurisdictions: Baltimore City (32 percent), Montgomery County (19 percent) and Prince George’s County (18 percent.)

“Maryland’s law was enacted in 1989 at the height of the AIDS crisis before we had effective treatments for HIV,” said Williams Institute Criminalization Project Director Nathan Cisneros, who is the study’s lead author. “We now have medical treatments that wholly eliminate the risk of transmitting HIV through sex, yet these advances are not reflected in Maryland law despite several reform attempts in recent years.”

Section 18-601.1 of Maryland’s Health Code states “an individual who has the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) may not knowingly transfer or attempt to transfer the human immunodeficiency virus to another individual.” Anyone “who violates the provisions of this section is guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction” could face a fine of up to $2,500 and/or up to three years in prison.

The Williams Institute based its report on data it obtained from the Maryland State Administrative Office of the Courts.

Download the full report

What do our HIV Justice Academy graduates think of the HIV Criminalisation Online Course?

The HIV Criminalisation Online Course is the centrepiece of our free online learning hub, the HIV Justice Academy, which launched just over a year ago.

More than 500 HIV justice advocates from around the world have since enrolled in the HIV Criminalisation Online Course. Those who have completed the course – and told us their thoughts in the end-of-course survey – are extremely positive about the experience, finding it relevant, interesting, and engaging. They especially liked the video content and personal testimonies which they tell us brought the issues to life. And we heard from both beginners and experts alike that the course was pitched right for them – no mean feat!

“Although I have been working on HIV discrimination for years, it was spectacular to refresh the memory,” wrote one. “The course met my expectations fully…now I really feel strongly equipped to continue doing my community work,” said another. “The course took a holistic approach to explaining HIV criminalisation. It lends legal, scientific, and social perspective, it also went further to touching on how I could be an advocate,” said a third.

One recent Academy graduate is HIV advocate and HIV criminalisation survivor, Lashanda Salinas, from the US state of Tennessee. She told us that the HIV Criminalisation Online Course “helped me learn things that I didn’t know, including how people are criminalised in other countries.” She also tells us that she found the course’s comprehensive Glossary and the Academy’s Resource Library “amazing and helpful”.

Like all the advocacy tools and resources contained within the HIV Justice Academy, the HIV Criminalisation Online Course is free to all, and available in English, French, Russian and Spanish.

The course can be done at your own pace, and you will receive a certificate of completion once you have passed the end-of-course test.

We’re delighted that Lashanda and all the other graduates of the HIV Justice Academy’s HIV Criminalisation Online Course have learned new information and gained new skills as we work together to achieve HIV justice.

Do you know someone who might benefit from the HIV Criminalisation Online Course, or the other resources in the HIV Justice Academy – our Action Toolkits and Resource Library? Why not share this link with them today: academy.hivjustice.net

New HIV JUSTICE WORLDWIDE website now live!

The new website for the HIV JUSTICE WORLDWIDE (HJWW) coalition is now online, in four languages – English, French, Russian, and Spanish.

HJWW is an international coalition working to shape the discourse on HIV criminalisation, as well as share information and resources, network, build capacity, mobilise advocacy, and cultivate a community of transparency and collaboration.

The HIV Justice Network serves as the secretariat, co-ordinating a global work plan; monitoring laws, prosecutions, and advocacy; providing tools and training for effective advocacy and communications; and connecting and convening a diverse range of stakeholders. With this structure, each coalition member can achieve more mission-aligned impact through their engagement in HJWW.

HJWW was founded in March 2016 during a meeting in Brighton, UK, that was funded by a grant from the Robert Carr Fund. Since then, we have expanded from seven founding partners to our current fourteen coalition members, with more than 130 organisational supporters from around the world. You can see our collective impact by visiting the Milestones page.

The new website – optimised for mobile screens as well as computers and tablets – reflects the work of our expanded coalition. It also provides information and links to websites and key resources explaining what HIV criminalisation is, why we care so much about it, and how you can stay informed and show your support.

Visit and share the new website today. After all, we won’t end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030, or end HIV-related stigma, discrimination and criminalisation without HIV JUSTICE WORLDWIDE!

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).

WHO publishes new policy guidelines describing the role of HIV viral suppression on stopping HIV transmission

New WHO guidance on HIV viral suppression and scientific updates released at IAS 2023

The World Health Organization (WHO) is releasing new scientific and normative guidance on HIV at the 12^thInternational IAS (the International AIDS Society) Conference on HIV Science.

New WHO guidance and an accompanying Lancet systematic review released today describe the role of HIV viral suppression and undetectable levels of virus in both improving individual health and halting onward HIV transmission. The guidance describes key HIV viral load thresholds and the approaches to measure levels of virus against these thresholds; for example, people living with HIV who achieve an undetectable level of virus by consistent use of antiretroviral therapy, do not transmit HIV to their sexual partner(s) and are at low risk of transmitting HIV vertically to their children. The evidence also indicates that there is negligible, or almost zero, risk of transmitting HIV when a person has a HIV viral load measurement of less than or equal to 1000 copies per mL, also commonly referred to as having a suppressed viral load.

Antiretroviral therapy continues to transform the lives of people living with HIV. People living with HIV who are diagnosed and treated early, and take their medication as prescribed, can expect to have the same health and life expectancy as their HIV-negative counterparts.

“For more than 20 years, countries all over the world have relied on WHO’s evidence-based guidelines to prevent, test for and treat HIV infection,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “The new guidelines we are publishing today will help countries to use powerful tools have the potential to transform the lives of millions of people living with or at risk of HIV.”

At the end of 2022, 29.8 million of the 39 million people living with HIV were taking antiretroviral treatment (which means 76% of all people living with HIV) with almost three-quarters of them (71%) living with suppressed HIV. This means that for those virally suppressed their health is well protected and they are not at risk of transmitting HIV to other people. While this is a very positive progress for adults living with HIV, viral load suppression in children living with HIV is only 46% – a reality that needs urgent attention.

An important new advocacy tool for HIV justice

New international principles provide guidance on many aspects of overcriminalisation, including HIV criminalisation

This week saw the long-awaited publication of the 8 March Principles for a Human Rights-Based Approach to Criminal Law Proscribing Conduct Associated with Sex, Reproduction, Drug Use, HIV, Homelessness and Poverty by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ).

The 21 principles aim to address the detrimental impact of overcriminalisation of a wide range of conduct – including HIV criminalisation – on health, equality, and other human rights, and seek to offer guidance on the application of criminal law in a way that upholds human rights.

The principles offer a clear, accessible, and operational legal framework and practical legal guidance on the application of criminal law to:

sexual and reproductive health and rights, including abortion;
consensual sexual activities, including in such contexts as sex outside marriage, same-sex sexual relations, adolescent sexual activity, and sex work;
gender identity and gender expression;
HIV non-disclosure, exposure, or transmission;
drug use and the possession of drugs for personal use;
and homelessness and poverty.

The principles were launched on Wednesday, March 8 – International Women’s Day – at a side-event at the 52nd Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director, Christine Stegling, welcomed the fact that these principles were named after, and were being launched on, International Women’s Day, “in recognition of the detrimental effects criminal law can, and too often does have on women in all their diversity.”

Volker Türk, High Commissioner for Human Rights, also noted the significance of the name and the launch on International Women’s Day: “Today is an opportunity for all of us to think about power and male dominated systems,” he said.

What do the principles cover?

The first six principles cover legality, harm, individual criminal liability, voluntary act requirement, mental state requirement, and grounds for excluding criminal liability.

The next seven principles cover the following areas: criminal law and international human rights law and standards; human rights restrictions on criminal law; legitimate exercise of human rights; criminal law and prohibited discrimination; criminal liability may not be based on discriminatory grounds; limitations on criminal liability for persons under 18 years of age; criminal law and non-derogable human rights; and criminal law sanctions.

The final eight principles cover specific areas: sexual and reproductive health and rights; abortion; consensual sexual conduct; sex work; sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression; HIV non-disclosure, exposure, or transmission; drug use and possession, purchase, or cultivation of drugs for personal use; life-sustaining activities in public places and conduct associated with homelessness and poverty.

How were the principles developed?

The idea for the principles came out of a 2018 meeting convened by the ICJ with UNAIDS and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). This convening endorsed the call by civil society and other stakeholders for the elaboration of a set of jurists’ principles to assist legislatures, the courts, administrative and prosecutorial authorities, and advocates to address the detrimental human rights impact of criminalisation in the above-mentioned areas.

Following this initial expert meeting, the ICJ engaged in a lengthy consultative process. For example, the HIV JUSTICE WORLDWIDE coalition submitted this response in 2019. Ultimately, a wide range of expert jurists, academics, legal practitioners, human rights defenders, and civil society organisations across the world reviewed and eventually endorsed or supported the principles.

Jurists who have endorsed the principles so far include: HJN Global Advisory Panel (GAP) member, Zione Ntaba, Justice of the High Court Malawi; former HJN GAP member Edwin Cameron, Retired Justice, Constitutional Court of South Africa and Inspecting Judge, Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services; and the Chair of HJN’s Supervisory Board, Richard Elliott.

The HIV Justice Network was one of several organisations and institutions to be the first to support the principles alongside Amnesty International, CREA, the Global Network of Sex Work Projects, and the International Network of People who Use Drugs.

You can find the principles on the ICJ website as well as in the English language version of the HIV Justice Academy’s Resource Library.

New principles lay out human rights-based approach to criminal law

New legal principles launched on International Women’s Day to advance decriminalization efforts

The International Committee of Jurists (ICJ) along with UNAIDS and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) officially launched a new set of expert jurist legal principles to guide the application of international human rights law to criminal law.

The ‘8 March principles’ as they are called lay out a human rights-based approach to laws criminalising conduct in relation to sex, drug use, HIV, sexual and reproductive health, homelessness and poverty.

Ian Seiderman, Law and Policy Director at ICJ said, “Criminal law is among the harshest of tools at the disposal of the State to exert control over individuals…as such, it ought to be a measure of last resort however, globally, there has been a growing trend towards overcriminalization.”

“We must acknowledge that these laws not only violate human rights, but the fundamental principles of criminal law themselves,” he said.

For Edwin Cameron, former South Africa Justice of the Constitutional Court and current Inspecting Judge for the South African Correctional Services, the principles are of immediate pertinence and use for judges, legislators, policymakers, civil society and academics. “The 8 March principles provide a clear, accessible and practical legal framework based on international criminal law and international human rights law,” he said.

The principles are the outcome of a 2018 workshop organized by UNAIDS and OHCHR along with the ICJ to discuss the role of jurists in addressing the harmful human rights impact of criminal laws. The meeting resulted in a call for a set of jurists’ principles to assist the courts, legislatures, advocates and prosecutors to address the detrimental human rights impact of such laws.

The principles, developed over five years, are based on feedback and reviews from a range of experts and stakeholders. They were finalized in 2022. Initially, the principles focused on the impact of criminal laws proscribing sexual and reproductive health and rights, consensual sexual activity, gender identity, gender expression, HIV non-disclosure, exposure and transmission, drug use and the possession of drugs for personal use. Later, based on the inputs of civil society and other stakeholders, criminalization linked to homelessness and poverty were also included.

Continued overuse of criminal law by governments and in some cases arbitrary and discriminatory criminal laws have led to a number of human rights violations. They also perpetuate stigma, harmful gender stereotypes and discrimination based on such grounds as gender or sexual orientation.

In 2023, twenty countries criminalize or otherwise prosecute transgender people, 67 countries still criminalize same-sex sexual activity, 115 report criminalizing drug use, more than 130 criminalize HIV exposure, non-disclosure and transmission and over 150 countries criminalize some aspect of sex work.

In the world of HIV, the abuse and misuse of criminal laws not only affects the right to health, but a multitude of rights including: to be free from discrimination, to housing, security of the person, movement, family, privacy and bodily autonomy, and in extreme cases the very right to life. In countries where sex work is criminalized, for example, sex workers are seven times more likely to be living with HIV than where it is partially legalized. To be criminalized can also mean being deprived of the protection of the law and law enforcement. And yet, criminalized communities, particularly women, are often more likely to need the very protection they are denied.

UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director for the Policy, Advocacy and Knowledge Branch, Christine Stegling said, “I welcome the fact that these principles are being launched on International Women’s Day (IWD), in recognition of the detrimental effects criminal law can, and too often does have on women in all their diversity.”

“We will not end AIDS as a public health threat as long as these pernicious laws remain,” she added. “These principles will be of great use to us and our partners in our endeavors.”

Also remarking on the significance of IWD, Volker Türk, High Commissioner for Human Rights, said, “Today is an opportunity for all of us to think about power and male dominated systems.”

His remarks ended with, “I am glad that you have done this work, we need to use it and we need to use it also in a much more political context when it comes precisely to counter these power dynamics.”

“Frankly we need to ask these questions and make sure that they are part and parcel going forward as to what human rights means,” he said.

In conclusion, Phelister Abdalla, President of the Global Network of Sex Work Projects, based in Kenya noted: “When sex work is criminalized it sends the message that sex workers can be abused…We are human beings and sex workers are entitled to all human rights.”