When: Friday April 26 – Sunday April 28, 2013
Where: The Dalla Lana School of Public Health
155 College St. West
Toronto, ON

This international, interdisciplinary research workshop on the public health implications of criminalizing HIV exposure/transmission will be the first of its kind. It will bring together the world’s leading researchers in the area and connect them with emerging researchers, criminologists, graduate students, lawyers, community members, decision makers, advocates, and people living with HIV/AIDS with an interest in HIV prevention and the criminal law. The workshop aims to: (1) produce new international research and scholarship on the public health impact of criminalizing HIV exposure; (2) document and respond to key challenges faced by this area of research; (3) attract new investigators to the field; and (4) promote collaborative international research. Our hope is to publish a selection of papers from the workshop as a special journal issue or edited book collection. A video of the research contributions of participants is also planned.

 

Public Lecture

Sex, drugs and minimalist visions: the legacy of HIV for the human rights enterprise

Friday April 26 2013, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.

Reception 7:30pm – 9:00pm

Room Location: Hart House (Debates Room), University of Toronto

In this talk, Joanne Csete will attempt to locate the idea of the right to health in the context of recent historical thinking about the evolution of today’s human rights movement.  She will reflect on the influence of HIV-related human rights struggles on the idea of the right to health and the framework of economic and social rights more broadly and  on strategies for the promotion and protection of economic and social rights that may offer insights on approaching the most intransigent human rights challenges of the HIV epidemic.

Joanne Csete is senior program officer in the Global Drug Policy Program of the Open Society Foundation. She was previously associate professor of public health, focusing on health and human rights, at Columbia University and also on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin – Madison. She was the founding director of the HIV Program, now Health and Human Rights Program, at Human Rights Watch and the executive director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. She held senior positions in UNICEF, including in the regional office in Nairobi, and worked in Africa for over ten years. She holds a PhD from Cornell University, a master’s in public health from Columbia, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Princeton.