This article by Glenn Betteridge provides a summary of a draft paper prepared for “Human Rights at the Margins: HIV/AIDS, Prisoners, Drug Users and the Law”, a satellite meeting held in Bangkok on 9 July 2004, and organized by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and the Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS Unit (India).
The article reviews some of the international laws and instruments that protect the rights of prisoners and that set out minimum standards for treatment of prisoners; outlines activities in the prison setting that place prisoners at risk for HIV; describes some of the policies and societal factors that fuel the HIV/AIDS epidemic in prisons; and proposes a series of specific actions that should be taken now to respond to this epidemic.