The International AIDS Conference (IAC) is held every two years. It is the premier gathering for policy makers, people living with HIV and those from different walks of life who are committed to ending the epidemic. Vienna was chosen to host the Conference primarily due to its proximity to Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the region with the fastest growing epidemics in the world.
The title of this year’s conference - “Rights here, right now” - was chosen to emphasize the critical connection between human rights and HIV/AIDS. The focus of the HIV response has shifted toward the impact of the law on the success of HIV interventions and is expected to remain there for many years to come. The IAC showed that despite promises from governments around the world to pursue evidence-based policies, HIV experts are frustrated at a refusal to adapt to new ways of looking at HIV and the people most at risk of contracting it. Most countries still adopt a stance that displays discrimination and criminal negligence. As Bill Clinton pointed out at the opening of the IAC: “With every advance made in the name of research and development, another one in the name of human rights has to be made if any progress is to be made.”
The role of parliaments was discussed in a number of thematic sessions at the IAC. The IPU was repeatedly quoted as the most credible partner for parliamentary work on HIV/AIDS, and members of its Advisory Group on HIV/AIDS took part in many of the sessions.
In conjunction with the wider conference, parliamentarians from forty-seven countries gathered for a day’s meeting in the Austrian Parliament. They discussed delicate issues relating to HIV testing and virus transmission modes, and looked at the impact of criminal law on public health activities. The MPs agreed that laws exclusively criminalizing the transmission of HIV were a violation of the right not to be discriminated against, as well as further stigmatizing people living with HIV and creating a false sense of security.
Instead of criminalizing HIV transmission, parliaments should examine and audit the laws that already exist and that are or can be applied in the context of HIV. They also agreed that interventions to prevent transmission from mother to child were the most cost-effective way to remove one major mode of HIV transmission. They endorsed the international community call to eliminate vertical transmission of the HIV virus by 2015 and pledged to support this as a goal in their countries.
