On January 19th, the HIV Legal Network released its newest brief “A gender-centred dialogue on alternative justice responses to HIV non-disclosure criminalization”. Funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada, the brief synthesizes and builds upon the roundtable we co-hosted with WHAI and CAAN in June 2022. The objective of the roundtable was to gather cross-sector perspectives about whether an alternative justice approach is warranted or appropriate in situations of non-disclosure. Given the interaction between HIV criminalization, disclosure, and gender, including the risks of gender-based violence and gendered power dynamics, gender-centred considerations grounded our discussion. We also specifically chose to focus on community-based justice alternatives and how we can foster collaboration between the HIV sector, the sexual assault and gender-based violence sector, and alternative justice organizations in this area of work.
Since most alternative justice responses focus on repairing the harm caused by an individual and include holding people accountable for their actions, the roundtable and our brief necessarily raised questions around applying the notions of “harms” or “wrongdoing” to HIV non-disclosure: is HIV non-disclosure a harm in and of itself? Or does it depend on the circumstances and characteristics of the involved parties? Similarly, can we really assert that non-disclosure is a wrong in and of itself? Is there still a role for community-based interventions to support people living with HIV and/or their partners around non-disclosure and if so, what forms would such interventions take? The brief grapples with these many complex issues and offers themes and recommendations to guide cross-sector collaboration going forward.
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