Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 06 October 2016

:: National ::

Cabinet approved the long-awaited amendments to the HIV Bill

• The Union Cabinet approved the long-awaited amendments to the HIV Bill, granting stronger protection to the country’s HIV community.
• The Bill prohibits discrimination against people living with HIV (PLHIV) in accessing healthcare, acquiring jobs, renting houses or in education institutions in the public and private sectors.
• There are approximately 21 lakh persons estimated to be living with HIV in India and the percentage of patients receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) treatment currently stands at a mere 25.82% as against the global percentage of 41%.
• The “HIV and AIDS Bill, 2014” will bring legal accountability and establish a formal mechanism to probe discrimination complaints against those who discriminate against such people.
• Bill requires that “no person shall be compelled to disclose his HIV status except with his informed consent, and if required by a court order.”
• The Bill lists various grounds on which discrimination against HIV-positive persons and those living with them is prohibited.
• These include the denial, termination, discontinuation or unfair treatment with regard to employment, educational establishments, health care services, residing or renting property, standing for public or private office, and provision of insurance.

The International Court of Justice ruled against the Marshall Islands

• The United Nations’ highest court rejected nuclear disarmament cases filed by the Pacific nation of the Marshall Islands against Britain, India and Pakistan, saying it did not have jurisdiction.
• The International Court of Justice ruled that the Marshall Islands had failed to prove that a legal dispute over disarmament existed between it and the three nuclear powers before the case was filed in 2014.
• It took a casting vote by the court’s President Ronny Abraham to break an eight-eight deadlock between the 16 judges on the question of jurisdiction in the case against Britain.
• In a landmark 1996 advisory opinion, the court said that using or threatening to use nuclear arms would “generally be contrary to” the laws of war and humanitarian law.
• But it added that it could not definitively rule on whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be legal “in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a state would be at stake.”