The HIV Act - better late than never.

Although over 15 years in the making, the HIV legislation has recently been passed in India. This Act is unique in many respects, and hopefully a precursor to broader health sector legislation. The process of law making in this instance included a robust consultative process with civil society and other stakeholders involved with HIV. Some of the unique aspects of the Act, as it was eventually passed, include an anti-discrimination provision to cover violations by the private sector, and concrete provisions to ensure informed consent while seeking HIV-related testing and treatment, and confidentiality of HIV status. However, the law fails to recognise the enhanced vulnerability to HIV that some people - sex workers, transgender people, men who have sex with men, and people who use drugs - face, which should have been addressed by extending anti-discrimination guarantees to these communities, thereby providing a legal tool to access health, employment, educational, and other sectors; while also serving public health imperatives to encourage marginalised people towards health-seeking behaviour without fear of stigma and mistreatment. Yet, at least the legislation does protect these criminalised communities from punishment when they access or are provided HIV-related services and commodities, which could otherwise be tantamount to a crime. Another drawback of the law is the diluted obligation of the State to provide antiretroviral treatment to those in need. The legislation also provides options to redress grievances, which are localised, less formal and intimidating, and more accessible than courts, thereby recognising that implementation and actualisation of rights is critical to the success of the law, and efforts to control HIV.

Transgender social inclusion and equality: a pivotal path to development.

INTRODUCTION: The rights of trans people are protected by a range of international and regional mechanisms. Yet, punitive national laws, policies and practices targeting transgender people, including complex procedures for changing identification documents, strip transgender people of their rights and limit access to justice. This results in gross violations of human rights on the part of state perpetrators and society at large. Transgender people's experience globally is that of extreme social exclusion that translates into increased vulnerability to HIV, other diseases, including mental health conditions, limited access to education and employment, and loss of opportunities for economic and social advancement. In addition, hatred and aggression towards a group of individuals who do not conform to social norms around gender manifest in frequent episodes of extreme violence towards transgender people. This violence often goes unpunished. DISCUSSION: The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) views its work in the area of HIV through the lens of human rights and advances a range of development solutions such as poverty reduction, improved governance, active citizenship, and access to justice. This work directly relates to advancing the rights of transgender people. This manuscript lays out the various aspects of health, human rights, and development that frame transgender people's issues and outlines best practice solutions from transgender communities and governments around the globe on how to address these complex concerns. The examples provided in the manuscript can help guide UN agencies, governments, and transgender activists in achieving better standards of health, access to justice, and social inclusion for transgender communities everywhere. CONCLUSIONS: The manuscript provides a call to action for countries to urgently address the violations of human rights of transgender people in order to honour international obligations, stem HIV epidemics, promote gender equality, strengthen social and economic development, and put a stop to untrammelled violence.

The Global Commission on HIV and the Law: recommendations for legal reform to promote sexual and reproductive health and rights.

The Global Commission on HIV and the Law was established in 2010 to identify and analyse the complex framework of international, national, religious and customary law shaping national responses to HIV and the well-being of people living with HIV and key populations. Two years of deliberation, based on an exhaustive review of international public health and human rights scholarship, as well as almost 700 testimonials from individuals and organizations in more than 130 countries, informed the Commission's recommendations on reform to laws and practices that criminalize those living with and vulnerable to HIV, sustain or mitigate violence and discrimination lived by women, facilitate or impede access to HIV-related treatment, and/or pertain to children and young people in the context of HIV. This paper presents the Commission's findings and recommendations as they relate to sexual and reproductive health and rights, and examines how the Commission's work intersects with strategic litigation on forced sterilization of women living with HIV, legal reform on the status of transgender individuals, initiatives to improve police treatment of female sex workers, and equal property rights for women living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

Barcelona 2002: law, ethics, and human rights. Using the law to improve access to treatments.

The XIII International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa in July 2000 focused worldwide attention on the problem of accessing treatments in developing countries. In the interim, thanks to the work of activists - from demonstrations to court cases, and from acts of public courage by people living with HIV/AIDS to ongoing lobbying of politicians and trade negotiators - some very significant developments have occurred. But the reality is that the vast majority of people living with HIV/AIDS still lack access to affordable, quality medicines. This article, a summary of a paper presented at "Putting Third First: Vaccines, Access to Treatments and the Law," a satellite meeting held at Barcelona on 5 July 2002 and organized by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, the AIDS Law Project, South Africa, and the Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS Unit, India, explores three approaches for improving access. In the first part, Richard Elliott provides an overview of the state of the right to health as embodied in international human rights law; comments on the experience to date in litigating claims to the right to health; and identifies potential strategies activists can adopt to advance recognition of the right to health. In the second part, Sharan Parmar and Vivek Divan describe price-control and drug-financing mechanisms used by industrialized countries to increase the affordability of medicines; and discuss how some of these mechanisms could be adapted for use in developing countries. Finally, Jonathan Berger describes the use of litigation in the courts by the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa.