Sexual assault, domestic violence and HIV: promoting women's rights through legislation.

General HIV laws seldom, if ever, address the human rights abuses that most affect women, particularly rape, sexual assault and domestic violence. In this article, which is based on his presentation at a concurrent session at the conference, Richard Pearshouse describes a Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network project to develop draft legislation covering certain areas of women's rights. The draft legislation is intended to be used as a practical resource for bringing about concrete law reform. This presentation won for Richard the International AIDS Society's Young Investigator Award for the conference's Track E (Policy and Political Sciences).