The Government has decided to introduce legislation, legalising abortion for underage girls who conceive after rape.
Speaking to Newsfirst, Minister of Child Development and Women’s Affairs, Tissa Karaliadda stated that in addition, new laws will also be formulated to legalise abortion in situations where the woman conceives as a result of incest.
Minister Karaliadda went onto say that the draft legislation in this regard is being compiled in consultation with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry …

When we began consulting in 2009, we had little idea of what Grassrooted would evolve into – we knew that HIV would remain our focus always, but that we had to include a broader Sexual and Reproductive Health approach, including Rights, if  we were to have any impact in Sri Lanka, with its low HIV prevalence and near invisible community.
Our consulting business model was simple: work for those who can afford to pay us, and …

Nota Bene – This is a sad article that once more underscores how primitive notions of morality continue to impact our world. What you read below could be Sri Lanka, except that we don’t really like admitting to the existence of sex work. May the gods in your head bless you.
Gaylord Grasshopper
Confiscating Condoms? The Dumbfounding Ways Police Deal With Prostitution
Each year, scores of new laws are proposed to make prostitution somehow even more illegal than …

A giant condom will be ‘wrapped’ around the Dutch Munt Tower in Amsterdam this week. It’s probably one of the more striking activities that will mark World AIDS Day. Meetings, film-viewings, theatre plays, articles, brochures and many other happenings will call upon people to join the fight against AIDS. To effectively fight AIDS though, we need to also fight tuberculosis. ‘Getting to zero’ is this year’s theme for World AIDS Day.
Getting to zero, backed by …

Remarks by Stephen Lewis, Co-Director of AIDS-Free World, delivered at a colloquium hosted by Yale University’s Global Health Leadership Institute and the Yale School of Public Health in New Haven, CT, on November 28, 2011.
On the Gutting of the Global Fund
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has been the international financial armada in the battle against the three diseases. The collapse of the next round of Global Fund grants, known as Round …

Earlier this year, in July, I managed to get an interview with Johnson Uncle and Jamis Aiya, Chairman and General Secretary of the Sri Lanka Associations of Bus Jack-sons (SLABJ) who discussed their motivation to sexually harass women on the bus. They also claimed during that interview that the Transport Ministry had underreported their successes, and claimed the overall sexual harassment was actually around 70%, give or take a squeeze here, a grope there, and rub …

 For Immediate Release: Bangkok, Thailand, 27 November 2011: 
 We, the under signed civil society organisations working on HIV, AIDS and human rights express grave concern about the manner in which the KORUS Free Trade agreement was passed in the South Korean Parliament on Tuesday the 22nd of November 2011.
 The South Korean government has reportedly pushed its parliament to ratify the agreement without transparent and open public debate. This act of secrecy and lack of accountability to the public was …

PRESS RELEASE
November 23, 2011, Colombo
Introduction
One third of Sri Lanka’s population is young people who in tern drive the country’s economy as its workfoce. When Sri Lanka reached 21 Million on its population this year and successfully ended the 3 decade long civil war we are at the verge of the demographic bonus. If Sri Lanka is to prosper and economically develop to catch up the emerging economies, now is the time.
The demographic bonus is a window …

Thousands of drug users and alcohol consumers – and people found in possession of small amounts of drugs and alcohol – are subjected to judicially-sanctioned caning, flogging, lashing or whipping each year, says a new report.
In the landmark study, the non-governmental organisation Harm Reduction International** finds that over forty states apply some type of judicial corporal punishment for drug and alcohol offences.  The vast majority of these sentences are handed down in countries such as …

So Magic Johnson has lived with HIV for 20 years. You’ve got to read the story, if you haven’t already. He is 52 and fitter than most of us in our 30s. What a journey he’s had. He started off at a time when he needed to pop 15 pills to stay alive… a time when HIV still equaled AIDS in America, and stigma was at mercurial levels.
20 years ago, a friend of mine, now …