Ian McKee, writing in Social Justice
Research Journal (Vol. 138, No. 2), says: "People who are more vengeful tend to be those who are motivated by
power, by authority and by the desire for status," because,
"they don't want to lose face."
Those who have studied motivation for revenge tells us that that although the
desire to seek revenge is very human, emotions that fuel revenge vary across
cultures.
But why talk about revenge when the discussion
is about criminalization of HIV transmission? Well because, in the law
criminalizing transmission of HIV is the desire to punish people we think
engage in wilful/deliberate transmission of the virus. It does not seem to
matter that the harm caused by these laws, far outweighs their presumed
benefits.
I could never write better than UNAIDS on
this topic – and they have provided excellent guidelines on the appropriate
legal approach to willful transmission of HIV – Here are their guidelines.
In Kenya both the HIV and AIDS Prevention
and Control Act, 2006 - part VI, and the Sexual Offences Act, criminalize willful transmission of HIV. The sexual offense Act, speaks not just of HIV but
also of other sexually transmitted diseases. Yet it is the HIV and AIDS
prevention and Control Act that goes overboard. It places an unreasonable demand requiring
a “person who is and is aware of being
infected with HIV ….[to] inform, in advance, any sexual contact ….of that fact.”
No one can argue on the need to protect the
public good, but it makes no sense at all to use strategies that are
self-defeating. As the UNAIDS documents notes “such application [of laws] risks undermining public health and human
rights….[and] directly contradict
efforts to prevent HIV transmission by encouraging safer sexual practices, voluntary
HIV testing, and voluntary disclosure.”
Moreover we now know that “much onward transmission takes place soon
after a person has acquired HIV, when his/her infectiousness is high and before
the person knows or suspects s/he is HIV positive or that s/he may be passing
the virus onto others” so really, creating conditions that criminalize
people on account of their health status, cannot be about good public health
reasons.
Methinks it is about our cultural
disposition to revenge – even when we know such revenge makes a bad situation
worse. Since the launch of the “Kenya HIV Prevention Revolution Road Map” last
week, there have been many stories in the media on HIV – yet, it deserves to
mention that in the same way we cannot possibly “treat ourselves out of this epidemic.” It is also a fact that we
cannot “arrest ourselves out of the
epidemic.”
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