HIV/AIDS

How are HIV and AIDS a human rights issue?

Human rights and HIV are inextricably linked. As the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s (IPU) Handbook for Legislators on HIV/AIDS, Law and Human Rights notes:

“A lack of respect for human rights fuels the spread, and exacerbates the impact, of the disease. At the same time, HIV undermines progress in the realization of human rights. This link is apparent in the disproportionate incidence and spread of the disease among key populations at higher risk, and particularly those living in poverty. It is also apparent in the fact that the overwhelming burden of the epidemic today is borne by low- and middle-income countries. AIDS and poverty are now mutually reinforcing negative forces in many of these countries.”

(Source: Health and Human Rights Resource Guide, François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health)

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Resources

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Type of resource: Books and reports

HIV and the Law: Risks, Rights & Health – 2018 Supplement (2018)
Global Commission on HIV and the Law

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Health and Human Rights Journal – special section on HIV and human rights (2017)
Health and Human Rights Journal

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Do no harm – Health, human rights and people who use drugs (2016)
UNAIDS

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HIV and the Law: Risks, Rights & Health (2012)
Global Commission on HIV and the Law

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HIV and the Law: Risks, Rights, and Health (2012) - Judith Levine
Global Commission on HIV and the Law

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Criminalisation of same-sex relationships, sex work and HIV transmission (2010) - Annual report to the Human Rights Council, A/HRC/14/20
Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health

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Right to health indicators; good practices for the right to health; HIV/AIDS and the right to health; neglected diseases, leprosy and the right to health; and an optional protocol to ICESCR (2003) - Annual report to the UN General Assembly, A/58/427
Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health

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