KINGSTON, Jamaica October 4, 2018 — Laws that criminalize consensual same-sex intimacy exist in a majority of Commonwealth countries, an unwelcome holdover from colonization — despite the fact that such laws have been long since repealed in the United Kingdom. But repealing these laws has proven difficult in some countries as they continue to be … Read more
Kingston, Jamaica October 2, 2018 — One year after the groundbreaking “Intimate Conviction” conference, which examined the role of the church in establishing and maintaining anti-gay laws in Commonwealth countries, an edited volume of some of the conference presentations is now available. Being launched in Kingston, the volume will serve as an important tool to … Read more
Submission to the United Nations Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice. The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network (“Legal Network”) welcomes this opportunity to provide comments to the United Nations Working Group on discrimination against women in law and in practice (“Working Group”) on the issue of women deprived … Read more
TORONTO, September 24, 2018 — The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network welcomes the new report, Regulation: the responsible control of drugs, published today by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, and calls on the federal government to study it carefully as Canada continues to struggle with an unabated crisis of overdose deaths.
There is an opioid overdose crisis in Canada. In 2017, a record 3,987 people in Canada died of apparent opioid overdoses, an increase of nearly 34% from 2,978 in 2016. As in the community as a whole, an increasing number of prisoners are overdosing — sometimes fatally — behind bars. Naloxone can temporarily reverse an … Read more
Tomorrow, August 31, marks International Overdose Awareness Day. The epidemic of overdose deaths continues to take a staggering toll, underscoring the need to challenge the deadly stigma surrounding drug use and to revisit the failed approach of criminalizing drug use and imprisoning people who use drugs. But in Ontario this year, the government appears intent … Read more
“Exploitation within the sex industry, including human trafficking, is of great concern to sex workers and to allied groups such as the Legal Network working to uphold sex workers’ human rights. However, anti-trafficking policies must be based on evidence and human rights — not ideological positions on sex work or moral panic.”
By Sandra Ka Hon Chu, Director of Policy and Advocacy International Prisoners’ Justice Day, observed every August 10, is a chance for people to reflect on what it truly means to be incarcerated in our country. Prisoners are not fundamentally different from us and remain members of our communities who are entitled to human rights. … Read more
July 25, 2018 Today we welcome an important development in the ongoing fight against HIV criminalization in Canada and around the globe. At the 22nd International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2018), underway this week in Amsterdam, 20 of the world’s leading HIV scientists published a peer-reviewed “Expert Consensus Statement on the Science of HIV in the … Read more
July 25, 2018 — Today, at the 22nd International AIDS Conference underway in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 20 eminent world scientists — including two leading Canadian researchers — released a groundbreaking Expert Consensus Statement providing their conclusive opinion on the low-to-no possibility of a person living with HIV transmitting the virus in various situations, including via … Read more