Compendium of Judgment for Judicial Dialogue on HIV, Human Rights and the Law in East and Southern Africa

Published on Tuesday, 29 October 2013 10:04 HIV continues to be one of the greatest public health challenges of our time. As noted in the landmark report, The Global Commission on HIV and the Law: Risks, Rights & Health, HIV is also a crisis of law, human rights and social justice. In the context of recent scientific breakthroughs on HIV prevention and treatment, and the growing epidemic of inequality confounding health and development across the globe, addressing the legal and human rights barriers to effective HIV responses is as important as ever. It is increasingly recognized that protecting the human rights of people living with HIV and key populations is critical to ensuring access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support for all. Members of the judiciary play a crucial role in protecting the rights of people living with HIV, women and girls, as well as the rights of key populations. They also play an important role in ensuring that Member States meet their obligations under international human rights instruments. By interpreting normative standards and by setting important precedents, judges influence social attitudes and shape legal frameworks. In that capacity, they are critical to the realization of a human rights based legal environment for an effective HIV response. Building on the work of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law and the judicial dialogue for Asia-Pacific which was held in Bangkok earlier this year, The Compendium of Judgments, HIV, Human Rights and the Law, is a collation of progressive jurisprudence on HIV-related matters that highlights how the law has been used to protect individual rights. The compendium presents a user-friendly compilation of judgments from different national and regional jurisdictions. This compendium focuses on a subset of the range of issues that are critical to an effective HIV response as discussed in the report of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law. It emphasizes a set of core issues in line with the issues being discussed at the Judicial Dialogue on HIV, Human Rights and the Law in Eastern and Southern Africa, 28–31 October 2013 in Nairobi, Kenya, including: non-discrimination, discrimination in employment and in health care settings, as well as in other settings; rights of women and girls in the context of HIV; rights of children and young people in the context of HIV; criminalization of HIV transmission, exposure and non-disclosure; rights of key populations (i.e.: sex workers, men who have sex with men, people who use drugs, transgender people, prisoners); access to medicines. The judgments selected for each issue area represent an evolution of jurisprudence, moving towards an effective judicial response to HIV that is consistent with human rights obligations. Download the report