Reading List

UNAIDS Terminology Guidelines – 2024

Language shapes beliefs and may influence behaviours. Considered use of appropriate language has the power to strengthen the global response to the AIDS epidemic. That is why the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) is pleased to make these guidelines to Preferred terminology freely available for use by staff members, colleagues and other partners working in the global response to HIV

Covering Risk: HIV Criminalization and Condoms

While some policymakers and courts have recognized condom use as sufficient to negate possibility of HIV transmission, people living with HIV in Canada remain at risk of prosecution for alleged non-disclosure before sex with a condom. While the law may be unsettled, the science and policy reasons are clear: prosecuting people living with HIV who use condoms is unscientific and unfair. Law- and policymakers must act to definitively preclude prosecutions against people living with HIV who use condoms.

Comments to Uganda’s Parliamentary Committee on HIV/AIDS and Related Matters about the HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Bill

Argues that a draft HIV bill (2009) including a provision criminalising HIV transmission, contravenes the right to equal protection and non-discrimination under Uganda's constitution and Uganda's obligations under international human rights law. Furthermore, these provisions will prove counterproductive to reducing the burden of the HIV epidemic in the country.

HIV criminal prosecutions and public health: an examination of the empirical research

Concludes that HIV-related criminal laws either fail to influence or increase STI testing avoidance, unprotected anonymous sexual contacts, and avoidance of health care because respondents do not feel safe speaking with health professionals. Suggests HIV-related criminal laws compromise public health and clinicians’ abilities to establish therapeutic relationships and to undertake HIV prevention and treatment work.