New Issue of Impact Examines HIV and the Law

The National AIDS Trust has launched the latest issue of Impact, its policy bulletin aimed at policy makers and opinion formers, which stimulates debate on key HIV policy topics.

This issue focuses on HIV and the law, addressing the often complex and difficult relationship between the two. It aims to give an overview of both the current legal developments that can affect the lives of people living with HIV and the extensive work that the National AIDS Trust and other organisations are doing to ensure that the law protects, rather than infringes, the rights of people living with HIV.

This collection of articles effectively demonstrates how the law has the potential to both protect and threaten the rights of people living with HIV in the UK. Impact summarises both the development of legal protections for people living with HIV, including the European Convention of Human Rights and the Disability Discrimination Act, and new legal threats that are emerging, including criminal prosecutions for HIV transmission and the current public health law reform proposals.

Some of the legal issues addressed within Impact have been on the radar for some time, for example the opportunities presented by the Single Equality Act.  Others, such as the need for effective hate crime legislation, are issues that have emerged relatively recently but yet still need to be tackled urgently.

Impact looks beyond UK law and legislation to the impact of the law on people living with HIV in other countries and regions. In one article Justice Edwin Cameron, the leading South African human rights lawyer, judge and humanitarian, discusses the law's response to the HIV epidemic in South Africa, raising the pertinent question of whether the law should act as 'sword or shield'.  Another article summarises the findings from a recent conference held by the National AIDS Trust on Legislation and Judicial Systems in relation to HIV and AIDS in Europe, which was attended by delegates from over 40 European countries.

Articles in Impact include:

• Justice Edwin Cameron, of the South African Supreme Court of Appeal, on the law's response to the HIV epidemic in South Africa.
• Jonathan Cooper OBE and Gemma Hobcraft, of Doughty Street Chambers, on how the European Convention on Human Rights can protect people living with HIV
• Tom Elkins of the National AIDS Trust on the rights of prisoners to be able to access needle exchange in prisons
• Lisa Power, Head of Policy at THT, on developments in criminal prosecutions for the reckless transmission of HIV
• Gay Moon, Head of the Equality Project at JUSTICE, on the need for the Single Equality Act to recognise multiple discriminations, to which people living with HIV are particularly vulnerable
• Yusef Azad on the use of forensic evidence in criminal prosecutions for HIV transmission
• Adam Hundt, of Pierce Glynn Solictors, on challenging current legislation which denies people of uncertain residency status access to free treatment on the NHS.

Charles Shepherd of Durex, which funded this issue of Impact, comments:

"This stimulating collection of articles gives the reader a wide-ranging insight into the relationship between HIV and the law. We hope that it will encourage discussion around the issues of the human rights of people living with HIV as well as prompt debate at all levels."

Impact is available to download from www.nat.org.uk.