Plenary Session 3: Seminar on HIV Criminalisation, Berlin, 20 September 2012 (EATG/DAH/IPPF/HIV in Europe)

Workshop Summaries
– Susan Timberlake (UNAIDS): Workshop 1 – How to advocate for prosecutorial guidelines
– Holger Wicht (DAH): Workshop 2 – Better laws through science (Austria/Germany/Switzerland)
– Lucy Stackpool-Moore (IPPF): Workshop 3 – Filling the evidence gaps
– Peter Wiessner (EATG): Workshop 4 – Understanding and creating linkages between HIV criminalisation and punitive laws and policies affecting key populations

Q&A Session
– Ton Coenen (HIV in Europe, Netherlands)
– Nikos Dedes (EATG, Greece)
– Arwel Jones (Crown Prosecutions Service, England & Wales)
– Petra Bayr (Parliamentarian, Austria)
– Timur Abdullaev (EATG, Uzbekistan)

Next steps
– Silke Klumb (DAH)
– Peter Wiessner (EATG)
– Kevin Osborne (IPPF)
– Ton Coenen (HIV in Europe)

Video produced by Nicholas Feustel, georgetown media, for the HIV Justice Network

Poll results show strong favor toward having the state HIV law

GENESEE COUNTY, MI — The poll results are in for a recent poll that asked MLive readers what they thought of a state law that was put in the spot light. The law, MCL 333.5210, states that anyone diagnosed with AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) or who knows they are infected with HIV and does not inform a sexual partner is guilty of a felony.

Should courts force those with HIV to tell their sex partners?

The advances in HIV-AIDS treatment in the last decade have been nothing short of amazing, transforming the virus from what was once a death sentence to what is now a manageable disease. Antiretroviral medications keep levels of the virus in carriers so low, they are often almost undetectable, greatly reducing the risk of ever passing the virus on to sexual partners.

Groups call for revising HIV disclosure statute

MASON CITY – Nick Rhoades served time in prison, including six weeks in solitary confinement, lost many of his privacy rights and must register as a sex offender for life. His crime: not disclosing to a partner with whom he was intimate that he was HIV-positive. “Does the punishment fit the harm done?”

A gay African man in the UK writes about the development of his thoughts about the appropriateness of using the criminal law to punish people living with HIV

Over the past few years I have had the opportunity of people telling me about their HIV diagnosis. This is possibly based on the fact that as an HIV positive person, I have been very open about my infection. However this was not something that happened over night.

How to Fight HIV Criminalization in Courts of Law and Public Opinion | AIDS Ark

As the XIX International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012) in Washington, DC, presented hopes of achieving an AIDS-free generation, some advocates focused attention on a major obstacle to this goal: the criminalization of people living with or at high risk for HIV.

Journalist Rod McCullom interviews Rep Barbara Lee about the REPEAL HIV Discrimination Act

Pop quiz: Which nation leads the world in the prosecutions of HIV exposure and/or transmission? Perennial human rights violators such as Russia, China, or dictatorships in the Middle East or Africa? Not even close. The surprising answer: The United States. In more than 60 nations it is a crime to expose another person to or transmit HIV.

HIV Criminalisation Survivors Speak Out: Human Rights Networking Zone Panel (AIDS 2012)

Panel session in the Human Rights Networking Zone at AIDS 2012 (25 July 2012)

Organizer: HIV Justice Network

Presenters:

– Edwin J Bernard, Co-ordinator, HIV Justice Network, United Kingdom
– Louis Gay, Deputy Chair, Patient Network for HIV, Norway [from 02:28]
– Robert Suttle, Assistant Director, The Sero Project, USA [from 10:19]
– Marama Pala, Executive Director, INA – Maori, Indigenous and Pacific Island HIV/AIDS Foundation, New Zealand [from 21:00]

Video produced by Nicholas Feustel, georgetown media,
for the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network

Press Conference (AIDS 2012)

HIV Criminalization – An Epidemic Of Ignorance?

Laws and prosecutions that single out people with living with HIV are ineffective, counterproductive and unjust.

As delegates from around the world met in Washington DC at AIDS 2012 to discuss how to “end AIDS” through the application of the latest scientific advances, this press conference highlighted how laws and policies based on stigma and ignorance are not only creating major barriers to prevention, testing, care and treatment, but also seriously violating the human rights of people living with HIV.

Hosted by (in alphabetical order): The Center for HIV Law & Policy / Positive Justice Project, United States; Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+), Netherlands; HIV Justice Network, United Kingdom/Germany; INA (Maori, Indigenous & South Pacific) HIV/AIDS Foundation, New Zealand; The SERO Project, United States; Terrence Higgins Trust, United Kingdom; UNAIDS, Switzerland.

Chaired by Paul de Lay, Deputy Executive Director, UNAIDS, Switzerland

Speakers:

– Nick Rhoades, HIV criminalization survivor, United States [from 03:28]
– Marama Pala, former complainant, New Zealand [from 09:15]
– Edwin J Bernard, Co-ordinator, HIV Justice Network/Consultant, GNP+ [from 14:35]
– Laurel Sprague, Research Director – SERO, United States [from 23:15]
– Lisa Fager Bediako, Congressional Black Caucus Foundation/ Positive Justice Project, United States [from 33:10]

Video produced by Nicholas Feustel, georgetownmedia.de, for the HIV Justice Network

Media Stigma, HIV And Criminalization for AIDS 2012 (Leo Herrera, Sero Project, US, 2012)

SERO Project, Media Stigma, HIV And Criminalization for International AIDS Conference, Washington DC, July 2012.

Presentation by Sean Strub, Film by Leo Herrera.