Despite rhetorical attention there is little programmatic guidance as to how best to ensure that women and men living with HIV have access to sexual and reproductive health services that help them realise their reproductive goals, while ensuring their human rights. A dynamic relationship exists...

Introduction: There is growing recognition in the health community that the legal environment — including laws, policies, and related procedures — impacts vulnerability to HIV and access to HIV-related services both positively and negatively. Assessing changes in the legal environment and...

The HIV epidemic has shed light on how government regulation of sex work directly affects the health and well-being of sex workers, their families and communities. A review of the public health evidence highlights the need for supportive legal and policy environments, yet criminalisation of sex...

Background: Every country in the world has made human rights-related commitments in relation to HIV, yet assessment of the extent to which HIV-related rights are indeed respected, protected and fulfilled remains relatively new. Civil society has, in some places, highlighted the strengths and...

Criminalisation is but one of the tools employed by governments to regulate sex and sexuality. Other types of regulation can equally have an impact on health and well-being and thus merit consideration. While restrictive laws related to sexuality are often driven by moral argumentation, public...

Introduction: Attention to the negative effects of structural barriers on HIV efforts is increasing. Reviewing national legal and policy environments with attention to the international human rights commitments of states is a means of assessing and providing focus for addressing these barriers...

Despite the growing number of women living with and affected by HIV, there is still insufficient attention to their pregnancy-related needs, rights, decisions and desires in research, policy and programs. We carried out a review of the literature to ascertain the current state of knowledge and...

Ensuring sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) is fundamental to the success of the Sustainable Development Goals and a range of other global commitments. As such, innovations that can help promote SRHR, including self-care interventions, offer exciting opportunities to improve health...

We describe the historical development of how maternal and neonatal mortality in the developing world came to be seen as a public-health concern, a human rights concern, and ultimately as both, leading to the development of approaches using human rights concepts and methods to advance maternal...

Background to the debate: The human rights responsibilities of drug companies have been considered for years by nongovernmental organizations, but were most sharply defined in a report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, submitted to the United Nations General Assembly in August...