August 11, 2008

Rethinking Criminalization of HIV

Calls to reverse laws that criminalize and stigmatize groups at risk for HIV marked the end of the XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, The New York Times reports.

“Let one of the conference outcomes be a major international push back against misguided criminal laws and prosecutions,” said Edwin Cameron, a justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals in South Africa who is HIV positive, in a plenary session.

Citing cases in Texas, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Bermuda and Switzerland to illustrate the backwardness of some laws today, Cameron said, “criminalization is warranted only where someone sets out, knowing he has HIV, to infect another and succeeds.”

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