Protecting HIV-positive women’s human rights: recommendations for the United States National HIV/AIDS Strategy by Aziza Ahmed with Catherine Hanssens and Brook Kelly
To bring the United States in line with prevailing human rights standards, its National HIV/AIDS Strategy will need to explicitly commit to a human rights framework when developing programmes and policies that serve the unaddressed needs of women. This paper focuses on two aspects of the institutionalized mistreatment of people with HIV: 1) the criminalization of their consensual sexual conduct; and 2) the elimination of informed and documented consensual participation in their diagnosis...
Read MoreHIV and Women: Incongruent Policies, Criminal Consequences by Aziza Ahmed
UN Women must take an aggressive role in the standardization of laws and policies at the global and national level where their incongruence has negative and often criminal consequences for the health and lives of mean and girls. The is article focuses in on thee such examples: opt-out testing for HIV, criminalization of the vertical transmissions, and the new World Health Organization guidelines on breastfeeding. HIV and...
Read MoreFeminism, Power, and Sex Work in the Context of HIV/AIDS: Consequences for Women’s Health by Aziza Ahmed
This paper examines the involvement of feminists in approaches to sex work in the context of HIV/AIDS. The paper focuses on two moments where feminist disagreement produced results in favor of an “anti-trafficking” approach to addressing the vulnerability of sex workers in the context of HIV. The first is the UNAIDS Guidance Note on Sex Work and the second is the “anti-prostitution pledge” found in the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. This article also examines...
Read More
