Share & more
Malawi’s Law Commission is to review the country’s penal code to make the deliberate spreading of HIV a criminal offence, the BBC reported on Monday.
The new law would criminalise unprotected sex by people who knew they had the virus. The move has been welcomed by women’s groups although they caution that proving such offences could be a legal nightmare.
The Executive Director of the Gender Support Programme, Cecilia Mussa, was quoted by the BBC as saying that in Malawi the new law could affect many husbands who contract the virus through extra-marital affairs and then infect their spouses.
President Bakili Muluzi has described the spread of Aids as a crisis and called for stringent measures to contain it. He recently ordered commercial sex workers and their clients to be arrested on sight as one way of slowing down the rate of infection.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions