Background: Based on a 2008 Law Commission report, Malawi''s HIV (Prevention and Management) Bill was tabled in mid-2017. It combined coercive and punitive approaches on the management of HIV with crucial administrative provisions to institutionalise the National AIDS Commission. This paper describes key interventions by civil society, activists and, prominently, the role of women living with HIV, in ensuring the removal of criminalising and rights-infringing provisions from the law.
Description: In 2017 Malawian and regional civil society organisations (CSOs) conducted joint advocacy, raising human rights and public health concerns on coercive and punitive provisions in the draft HIV law. This joint, cumulative advocacy resulted in Parliament''s HIV Committee proposing a range of amendments. Their amendment report addressed many civil society concerns but retained section 43, criminalising the “deliberate transmission” of HIV. In weeks before the Bill went to vote, Malawian women activists, led by women living with HIV, directly engaged Parliamentarians, protested and delivered statements condemning section 43 as a threat to human rights. On 28 November 2017, Parliament passed the Bill into law, adopting the HIV Committee''s amendment report in full and going further to exclude section 43, thus comprehensively rejecting criminalisation of HIV.
Lessons learned: Manufactured urgency to enact the law left little space for meaningful engagement with affected communities. Adopting the slogan, “My body, my right”, women activists, led by women living with HIV, achieved a fundamental shift in the understanding of and attitude towards HIV criminalisation by lawmakers and the executive. The technical objections and support of lawyers and human rights CSOs were effective in a supporting capacity, legally empowering the affected community with the language to implicate the proposed law in their lived realities. This grounded the discourse and powerfully challenged the abiding patriarchal and stigmatising underpinnings of the law''s purported protections. Ultimately, the ability of “ordinary” women living with HIV to articulate what the law meant in real terms directed Parliament''s response.
Conclusions/Next steps: The feminisation of HIV criminalisation in Africa demands a response led by women living with HIV. This requires the active engagement, participation and full legal empowerment of affected communities.

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