Community activists, policymakers and researchers have long identified human rights as central to addressing the HIV epidemic. Over the past 10 years, efforts to incorporate human rights into the HIV response have focused on reforming laws which criminalise sex work and male-to-male sex. Laws criminalising sex work and male-to-male sex drive communities underground, making HIV prevention, testing, and treatment efforts more difficult. This article draws on a qualitative study conducted in Papua New Guinea (PNG) which examined stakeholder views on prospects for law reform, the impact of criminal laws on communities, and the role of law reform in addressing the HIV epidemic. While efforts to reform criminal laws related to sex work and male-to-male sex have taken place in PNG, these have been unsuccessful. Stakeholders identified that strategies for addressing criminal laws and the impacts of law reform must be grounded in the PNG context, that there must be material support for community members to engage with criminal laws and human rights, and that dignity rather than HIV should be the justification for law reform.
Keywords: HIV; Laws; criminalisation; human rights; male-to-male sex; sex work.