Commissioner Michael Kirby on left

The UN-backed Global Commission on HIV and the Law has opened a meeting in Oslo, to examine the issue of the criminalisation of HIV-transmission.

About seventy experts are meeting to discuss laws and punishments which often frustrate HIV prevention programs.

The Commission was launched two years ago, by the UN Development Program, an independent body made up of twelve of the world's most respected legal minds and leaders in the field of HIV.

One Commission member, retired Australian High Court judge, Michael Kirby says while there's still legal discrimination in some Commonwealth countries, there has been progress as well.

Presenter: Sen Lam

Speaker: Michael Kirby, retired Australian High Court Judge and current member of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law

KIRBY: Well, it's not only the Pacific island countries, but the Pacific island countries that were members of the British empire, have inherited, as we did in Australia, the laws against homosexuals. These laws were made by the colonial administrators and although they had been abolished in countries like Australia and Britain, they remain steadfastly in force in forty-one of the fifty-four countries of the Commonwealth of nations. And they isolate people, stigmatise them, and make them second-class citizens and put them out of the range of the messages that are necessary to ensure that they protect themselves and thereby protect others. So, this is the problem and it's a problem for the Commonwealth as a whole, but a problem for the Commonwealth members in Asia and the Pacific, more specifically.

LAM: So are we then, asking some of these countries to change their cultural mores, to embrace more liberal attitudes to sex, particularly, sex-workers or homosexuality, in order to have more effective HIV prevention programmes?

See the original news story on radioaustralia.net.au.

Listen to the radio program. (Window Media)

Photo credit: ABC - Australian Broadcasting Company