Western Central Europe

On 20 June during a signing ceremony at the City Hall, Oslo became the second Nordic city to join the Fast-Track Cities initiative by signing the Paris Declaration on cities ending the AIDS epidemic. 

Oslo is joining a network of over 400 cities and municipalities around the world who are working to drive forward locally the global goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.

Over half of all people living with HIV in Norway live in Oslo, and it is also the city where most new infections in Norway are being diagnosed.

Robert Steen, Vice Mayor for Health, Ageing and Municipal Services in The City of Oslo, remarked:

“By signing this agreement, the City of Oslo acknowledges that to end the epidemic we need a holistic approach that provides everyone access to HIV prevention and life-saving and life-improving treatment, care and support services for HIV. It is not enough only to treat people for HIV if they still have poor health and quality of life. I am proud to say that the City of Oslo stands with cities around the world in the fight to eradicate this disease.”

The civil society organisation of people living with and affected by HIV in Norway, HIVNorge, advocated with the City Council in Oslo to become a part of the Fast-Track Cities initiative for more than three years, and are excited about the new partnership.

Addressing the event in the Oslo City Council, the Secretary General of HIVNorge Anne-Karin Kolstad said that “Stigma and self-stigma is a major problem for those among us who live with HIV in Oslo. It reduces the quality of life and makes people less able to protect themselves and others. We need new instruments to eliminate stigma for people who live with HIV.”

HIVNorge will encourage the city to assess and prepare a status report on the HIV epidemic and response in Oslo, which can form the basis for the city's multistakeholder strategy to achieve the goals and objectives of the Fast-Track Cities initiative. To adequately prioritise the HIV response, the city will first assess access and barriers to service uptake and provision, as well as measures supporting the HIV response under the auspices of both municipal and state actors together with non-governmental organisations.

The Fast-Track Cities initiative was launched in 2014 with support from four core partners: UNAIDS, the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), UN-Habitat and the city of Paris. Signatories to the initiative commit to ending AIDS at the municipal level, through an accelerated HIV response, by providing leadership, putting people at the centre, addressing the causes of risk and vulnerability to HIV, using the AIDS response for positive social transformation, and mobilizing resources for integrated public health and sustainable development.    

As a core technical partner to the Fast-Track Cities initiative, IAPAC is supporting member cities and municipalities in their efforts to optimize equity-based, data-informed HIV responses. Having worked with local stakeholders to facilitate Oslo becoming a Fast-Track City, Tanja Dittfeld, IAPAC’s Regional Director for Europe will work with HIVNorge to develop and implement a strategy aimed at closing gaps in HIV testing, prevention, and treatment, as well as addressing HIV and intersectional stigma and discrimination.

“We warmly welcome Oslo as the second Nordic city to join the global network of Fast-Track Cities committed to ending their urban HIV epidemics by 2030,” said Dr. José M. Zuniga, President/CEO of IAPAC and the Fast-Track Cities Institute. “We look forward to working with Oslo’s political, public health, and community stakeholders to advance an equitable and inclusive HIV response that leaves no person behind as the city aims to attain Fast-Track Cities objectives and targets.”

Cooperation and exchanges of experience with other European cities, including increasing support to cities in Eastern Europe, is critical at this point. In addition to a lack of resources, stigma and discrimination are major barriers to preventing new HIV infections and ensuring people living with HIV can access treatment and quality care. 

 UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said

“We are at a critical time in the HIV response where  we need determined leadership from communities, CSOs, governments and the UN, together. The role of cities is key. With the brilliant facilitation by IAPAC, more and more cities are becoming Fast Track Cities. I congratulate Oslo and look forward to its engagement in the Fast-Track Cities initiative.  Well done HIVNorge for this success in Oslo joining. Communities are the drivers of bold action to end inequalities.”

More than 600 000 Ukrainian refugees arrived in Germany since the war broke out. Among them many people living with HIV – mostly women.

In the beginning many needed shelter and then there were lots of requests about obtaining HIV treatment. Many refugees had left their supply behind or took the bare minimum.

Vasilisa Sutushko, who was born with HIV, arrived in Berlin at the beginning of March and had only one month of HIV medicine with her. She also had no clue navigating the German health system. A local NGO, Berliner AIDS Hilfe, one of Germany’s oldest HIV organizations, was flooded with an influx of calls for help.

“I got these pills for €10 for three months,” Ms Sutushko said, pointing at a box of HIV treatment. “When I came to Berlin, I had to understand whether I received medicine for myself here for free or for a fee,” she said.

Unlike in her native country, she explained, in Germany you need a prescription for almost all medicines.

“In Ukraine, I can get any pills I need without any problems at the pharmacy,” Ms Sutushko said.

Berliner Aids-Hilfe’s migration consultant, Sergiu Grimalschi, said when the first refugees began to arrive there were few organized structures, so they had to improvise across the country. “We had to find an urgent solution,” he said.

They helped countless refugees with medicine, paperwork, housing, and other pressing health issues.

According to Berliner AIDS Hilfe, most of the refugees living with HIV won’t be able to go back until the bombed medical facilities are rebuilt.

Ms Sutushko, founder of Teens Ukraine – an NGO that helps young people who live with HIV- and others are now trying to set up a network to further help people living with HIV. Stigma and discrimination in Ukraine regarding one’s HIV status has made many refugees hesitant about seeking help or open about living with HIV in their adopted countries. "I'm happy to see people like me here who need help, I can also be helpful," she said.

UNAIDS estimates that 260 000 Ukrainians live with HIV. Up to 30 000 fled their country since the start of the war and need HIV treatment.

Interrupting treatment, even temporarily, can lead to drug resistance and increased risk of progression to AIDS.

The start of the Ukrainian war fifty days ago surprised many people including Berliner Aids-Hilfe’s migration consultant. Sergiu Grimalschi, along with his colleagues, has been thrust at the forefront of helping thousands of Ukrainian refugees coming to Germany, primarily those living with HIV.

Mr Grimalschi, a professional interpreter, came to Berlin from Romania in the early 1990s. For the past twenty-five years, he has been working on the HIV response primarily with migrants and is currently employed by Germany’s oldest HIV organization. From 2006 to 2012 he helped countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) develop HIV health services and worked in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and Poland.

UNAIDS spoke with Mr Grimalschi about the challenges Ukrainian refugees living with HIV face in Berlin.

Question: Sergiu, many refugees living with HIV in Germany are now coming to you directly. Were you able to prepare for this ahead of time?

Answer: No. No one was prepared and, to be honest, the war was a complete surprise for us, and for me personally. Eastern Europe has been a priority for my organization since 2010. We all speak eastern European languages and have stayed informed about the situation in the region. So, when the war started, I did a simple thing that turned out to be decisive. I wrote one mass email to an EECA group saying that anyone living with HIV fleeing from the war to Germany could contact me or my colleague by phone. First, I got called by colleagues from Moldova, with whom I worked closely during the COVID-19 pandemic when we provided medicines to people stuck in Europe. Then various Ukrainian organizations started contacting me. They continued to share my email and within a week the Berliner Aids-Hilfe numbers were on all social networks and on all Telegram channels.

Question: Many refugees living with HIV fled to Europe, in particular Germany, because they believed that everyone here has access to HIV treatment and services. True or false?

Answer: Yes, everyone has access except migrants without health insurance. That has changed only recently.

In Berlin, for example, every person, including undocumented and uninsured migrants could access treatment but only since the end of 2018.

All this was due to the fact that people without health insurance in Germany cannot be treated, and the law does not take into account people without insurance. And, as you know, if you cannot be treated, you die. Since 2000, we focused on all possible ways to provide all people living with HIV without insurance with access to medicines and qualified medical treatment.

Addressing this issue was the most difficult and the most important task for us in many years, but we managed to solve it. And that is thanks to many years of advocacy work that we did.

Question: So tell us how you deal with influx of refugees in Germany?

Answer: It is still not so simple. Firstly, the situation is very different in different states (landers) of Germany.

Secondly, when the first refugees began to arrive, there were no really organized structures, so we had to improvise with colleagues across the country. One bad thing was for example that Ukrainian people fleeing their homes were advised to leave medicines for those who stayed in Ukraine. In the first days of the war, medicines were collected throughout Germany in order to send them to Ukraine or Poland. But after one week, a lot of people living with HIV from Ukraine were in Berlin. A few women came to me saying, ‘I have only 2 or 3 pills because I gave everything to my husband.’

We had to find an urgent solution.

We went to doctors in Berlin and found stockpiles of HIV treatment but then we ran out. Doctors wrote out prescriptions, but it was not clear how they would be covered or paid for. Only Dolutegravir, for example, which is a part of the treatment that a majority of Ukrainians living with HIV take, costs more than 700 euros here. But everyone made extra efforts– doctors, social workers, other people living with HIV – they said, 'There is a war going on.’ And eventually the German health authorities began gradually to cover treatment costs.

Many people who arrive from Ukraine still do not understand how one gets treatment in Germany. There are no big specialized centers that dispense medicine here. I explain to people: ‘we help you to get an HIV-specialized doctor in your region who gives you a prescription and then you can go to the pharmacy and get your medicine.’

In recent weeks, onlly some of the 16 German regions have been treating people without insurance, without registration, based only on the person’s passport. For the past two weeks in Berlin, doctors have been authorized to treat Ukrainian refugees just by providing photocopies of their passport and sending it to the social services to get reimbursed. A real show of human solidarity.

Question: How many people are currently receiving antiretroviral therapy in Berlin?

Answer: At the moment, about 600 Ukrainians living with HIV are in contact with me throughout Germany and 150 in Berlin. Overall, I would say about 2,000 people total but not everyone has asked for help yet because they have enough medicine.

Question: Sergiu, tell us how the war started for you?

Answer: When my mother called me from Romania on the morning of February 24 and said, ‘the war has begun,’ I asked her, ‘Mom, did you sleep badly? Stop!’ I thought she had a bad dream. I never thought that Russia would go ahead with the invasion of Ukraine.

Personally, I am very connected to Eastern Europe. My grandmother left Russia in 1918, my grandfather was from Chernivtsi, which means that theoretically, he could have been Ukrainian if he had not left in 1940. I have a lot of very good friends, relatives, and colleagues with whom I worked there so this is terribly painful for me.

Question: Sergiu, as I understand it, you not only help refugees with treatment but also help out with housing and other things?

Answer: Yes, of course, we help with the refugee registration and access to social aid services, health insurance, psychological support in their language and everything that they need. We also advise people against going to the countryside. It is better for people living with HIV or who need substitution therapy to stay in Berlin or other big cities, because there are better health facilities.

I and my colleagues and friends try to help people with accommodation and clothing. I have a friend, a Romanian doctor, whose house was empty. I asked her if she wanted to help. Now six Ukrainian families live in her house. Another German friend gave 2,500 euros to women from Ukraine for urgent needs. Of course, I am accountable for all this money, but this is a personal, private initiative. One of my friends, a lawyer, bought iPads for many refugee children. He says children need to study so now they can go online.

Question: Amazing work Sergiu... What keeps you going?

Answer: I am impressed by all this human solidarity and I hope that all this horror will end shortly...This is a big test for all of us.

Members of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on HIV and AIDS from the United Kingdom, along with the Director of Stop AIDS, visited UNAIDS Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, to strengthen collaboration.

Since the mid-1980s, APPG has brought United Kingdom parliamentarians together from across the political divide to fight for the rights of people living with HIV.

“I think all politicians are driven by wanting to make a difference,” said David Mundell, Member of Parliament, who is Co-Chair of APPG. “This is an established all-party group that has been effective, with a voice in parliament and that also acts globally.”

Mr Mundell said that APPG is focused on maintaining momentum on HIV in the face of several challenges. Not only did some people in the United Kingdom mistakenly imagine that HIV was already sorted, he said, he also alluded to the challenges in keeping attention on HIV given the war in Ukraine and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“We have to be advocates for change in terms of keeping HIV high on the agenda and resources available,” he said. For example, he believes that funds for Ukraine should be additional and not come from the international development envelope and will argue that case to the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary.

In his words, it’s all about putting the best case forward. “There is a competition for attention, therefore we need to put issues into context,” Mr Mundell said. He mentioned UNAIDS and its Cosponsors’ Education Plus initiative as a great way to empower young women while also tackling HIV. “Demonstrating the interconnectedness of such issues will allow us to sustain our arguments.” Every week, more than 4200 young women become infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa but keeping girls in secondary school reduces that risk by up to 50%.   

Reflecting on the United Kingdom’s decision to cut its level of official development assistance from 0.7% to 0.5% of gross domestic product and reduce funding for the AIDS response, Mr Mundell explained that there have been many ongoing changes in the United Kingdom, but he is confident in making the case that investment in the AIDS response is good value. “It is quite clear that United Kingdom funding will be more outcome-based, with a need to show direct results based on investment. APPG intends to maintain United Kingdom leadership in the AIDS response, working with community groups on the ground with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, as well as UNAIDS.”

UNAIDS and APPG reiterated their strong commitment to having a fully replenished Global Fund. Twenty years after the founding of the Global Fund, the target for the seventh replenishment is to raise US$ 18 billion to save 20 million lives. According to estimates, this represents 14% of the total of US$ 130.2 billion needed for the period 2024–2026.

Inter-Parliamentary Union Secretary-General Martin Chungong and UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima hosted a joint round table for APPG to discuss the crucial role of legislators worldwide in taking the bold actions needed to end AIDS.

“We parliamentarians from the United Kingdom cannot tell people in other countries how to run their country, that is not what we want to do,” said Mr Mundell, noting that instead the group worked to share experiences and build partnerships. He cited how criminalization has been linked to higher numbers of HIV infections, which can often lead to much more difficult, long-term consequences. “By highlighting certain practices and steps we want to show that certain changes can have a positive effect without undermining cultural values,” he said.

Mr Mundell noted that during the Commonwealth discussions in mid-March, he urged all nations to have full and frank discussions on progress in advancing the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people and progress in ending AIDS, saying that a huge amount had been achieved but that there was still a lot to do.

Suki Beavers, UNAIDS Director, Gender Equality, Human Rights and Community Engagement, commended APPG’s inclusive approach. She also stressed that the role of parliamentarians is key.

“Parliamentarians can open up the space to discussions and make diverse voices heard in the national policy process, especially the voices of people who are often excluded from decision-making on the issues that affect them most,” she said. Ms Beavers also said that strengthening peer-to-peer relations (parliamentarian to parliamentarian) can also drive progressive law reform.

Mr Chungong shared how parliamentarians from across the world are stepping up their work with UNAIDS to address the inequalities that hold back progress on ending AIDS.

In Ms Beavers’ closing remarks, she reiterated to the group the fact that the HIV response was at a critical point. “We need to move to a more targeted and systemic approach as laid out in the new Global AIDS Strategy 2021–2026, including fully funded and supported community-led responses,” she said.

“It is really clear that we need major leverage to influence and to create more and more diverse partnerships so that we can achieve the goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.” 

GENEVA, 7 April 2022—The German Federal Government has agreed to host a new UNAIDS office in Bonn. The agreement is part of Germany’s commitment to reinforce its partnership with the United Nations and part of UNAIDS’ commitment to realign its work to the new Global AIDS Strategy 2021–2026: End Inequalities, End AIDS.

“UNAIDS welcomes this important support by Germany,” said Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS. “Germany is continuing to demonstrate its commitment to end AIDS through shared responsibility and global solidarity, and we look forward to working ever more closely into the future towards our common goals.”

The UNAIDS office will house UNAIDS’ management support functions, including People Management, Information and Communications Technology, Finance and the Independent Evaluation Office. Operations will begin in mid-2022 and will be part of the UNAIDS Secretariat’s more geographically distributed “global centre”. Approximately 45 UNAIDS staff will be working in Bonn, a location that also hosts United Nations organizations that include the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the United Nations Volunteers programme, the United Nations Global Centre for Human Resources Services and the United Nations System Staff College Knowledge Centre for Sustainable Development. It will become the third largest United Nations office in Bonn and joins 25 other United Nations entities with a presence in the city.

“With this relocation of UNAIDS staff to Bonn, Germany shows its commitment to supporting the important work of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS in the global AIDS response and reflects Germany’s commitment to global health overall. We hope that this move as part of the realignment process will contribute to a more effective and cost-efficient UNAIDS. We welcome the United Nations staff to Bonn,” said the German Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach.

The Government of Germany, parliamentarians, civil society and other partners in Germany have long shown commitment to the global HIV response and to global health and health security. Germany has provided regular contributions to UNAIDS and was the third largest donor in 2020, investing a total of almost US$ 30 million in that year, and pledged US$ 1 billion to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria at its last replenishment.

A valued partner of UNAIDS, the Government of Germany is firmly committed to ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 and has invested significant resources to ensure that no one is left behind. In 2020, Germany contributed an additional €20 million to UNAIDS above its core contribution to strengthen the response to HIV during the COVID-19 pandemic.

UNAIDS

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizations—UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank—and works closely with global and national partners towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more at unaids.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

DUBLIN/GENEVA, 1 March 2022—Ireland has today announced that it is increasing its core funding for UNAIDS from €2.4 million in 2021 to €2.5 million in 2022. The announcement was made at a meeting in Dublin between Ireland’s Minister for Overseas Development Aid and Diaspora, Colm Brophy, and the Executive Director of UNAIDS, Winnie Byanyima.

Ireland has been a partner and supporter of UNAIDS for more than 20 years. It has supported programmes that reduce the impact of HIV among some of the most-at-risk groups, including gay men and other men who have sex with men and young women and girls. In addition to the €2.4 million contribution in 2021, Ireland provided €1 million in support of UNAIDS’ zero discrimination agenda.

“Ireland is a strong leader in the global AIDS response and continues to be a steadfast ally to UNAIDS,” said Ms Byanyima. “This additional financial contribution from Irish Aid is an important signal at a time when the world must step up its efforts to remove laws that harm and instead create laws that empower so that people can receive life-saving and life-changing HIV services.”  

This year on Zero Discrimination Day, which is being held under the theme “Remove laws that harm, create laws that empower”, UNAIDS is highlighting the urgent need to take action against discriminatory laws. In many countries, laws result in people being treated differently, excluded from essential services or being subject to undue restrictions on how they live their lives, simply because of who they are, what they do or who they love. Such laws are discriminatory—they deny human rights and fundamental freedoms.

On Zero Discrimination Day, 1 March, we celebrate the right of everyone to live a full and productive life—and live it with dignity and free from discrimination.

UNAIDS

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizations—UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank—and works closely with global and national partners towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more at unaids.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

The neighbouring Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia offer starkly contrasting examples of how different public health approaches affect HIV epidemics among people who inject drugs. In the early 2000s, the two countries had among the highest rates of HIV diagnosis in Europe. As was the case for many European countries at that time, the sharing of non-sterile injecting equipment among drug users was fuelling their HIV epidemics.

The two epidemics began to diverge in the mid-2000s. According to the HERMETIC study, new HIV infections in Estonia declined by 61% countrywide and by 97% among men who inject drugs between 2007 and 2016.

Latvia’s HIV epidemic followed a different trajectory. The HERMETIC study highlights that, between 2007 and 2016, new HIV infections increased by 72% overall. By 2016, overall HIV incidence in Latvia was almost double that in Estonia (35 cases per 100 000 people versus 19 cases per 100 000).

Both epidemics centred largely on the sharing of injecting equipment by people who inject drugs, and probably on unprotected sex between people who inject drugs and their sexual partners. The HERMETIC study concludes that the main difference between the two epidemics lay in the availability of harm reduction services.

Needle–syringe programmes had been operating in Latvia since 1997, but on a very limited scale. As late as 2016, Latvia was distributing about 93 needle–syringes per drug user per year; neighbouring Estonia was distributing 230 per user per year. Both countries expanded access to opioid substitution therapy, which is proven to reduce drug injecting and HIV transmission, and improved HIV testing and antiretroviral therapy services for people who inject drugs. Although access to opioid substitution therapy remained limited in both countries, it was higher in Estonia than in Latvia.

The HERMETIC study’s results indicate that by 2016, about half the people who inject drugs in Estonia were taking HIV tests in a 12-month period—and three quarters of those who tested HIV-positive were on antiretroviral therapy. In Latvia, meanwhile, about 10% of people who inject drugs took an HIV test in any given year between 2007 and 2016, and only 27% of those living with HIV were on antiretroviral therapy. Slow adoption of international HIV treatment guidelines contributed to the low treatment coverage in Latvia.

The Gallery Marie de Holmsky, in the heart of Paris, recently hosted the ArtPositive exhibition, an artistic project by visual artists living with HIV. The initiative aimed to use art as a tool to tackle the stigma, discrimination and isolation that people living with HIV still face.

ArtPositive featured works by visual artists Boré Ivanoff, Adrienne Seed and Nacho Hernandez Alvarez and by photographer Philipp Spiegel.

“We want to remind the world that AIDS is not a thing of the past. We want to remind everyone that all people living with HIV, even though thanks to advances in science they are not as threatened by death as they used to be years ago, today still face extremely cruel and unfair stigma, isolation and even discrimination,” said Mr Ivanoff. “I am convinced that art is the best way to overcome any stigma, isolation and discrimination based on differences and health status.”

About two years ago, after Mr Ivanoff, a Bulgarian-born Parisian artist, decided to make his HIV status public he received many messages of solidarity and support, but some close friends distanced themselves from him. “But this fact convinced me even more that I must continue to fight to open people’s eyes and to overcome this hypocritical way of thinking and treating people who have dared to reveal their HIV status,” he said. He emphasized that along with the creation of art, advocacy and activism are the only things that keep him in some psychological stability and give some existential impulse and a sense of doing something really important and useful for the good of humanity.

Adrienne Seed, an artist, writer, sculptor and HIV activist from Manchester, United Kingdom, who has been living with HIV for almost 10 years, recalled, “Back then, there were very few women speaking openly about living with HIV. I began to speak out via my website, via the media and, of course, via my art.”

“People living with HIV also live with stigma. We are judged by society and we are seemed to deserve some kind of punishment,” said José Manuel González Peeters, an artist living with HIV from Barcelona, Spain.

Philipp Spiegel, a photographer living with HIV from Vienna, Austria, explained that his work is part of a long-term project entitled The Privilege of Intimacy. “My HIV diagnosis stripped me of my feeling of intimacy for a long time; something that was once so natural to me had been taken away, after which I had to embark on a journey to rediscover what intimacy means to me, and to learn to appreciate it even more,” he said. “Reflecting upon this, I realized the absence of intimacy is more widespread than I had thought. Not only people living with HIV, but all people who live in fear of being ostracized or stigmatized for a wide range of reasons. Single mothers, LGBTQ+ people in certain environments or anyone who feels they need to hide out of societal reasons.”

“We, the artists living with HIV would like to express our sincere gratitude to all our official partners and all media around the world who have helped us popularize our cause, the fight against HIV stigma and the awareness that AIDS is not over yet,” said Mr Ivanoff, speaking on behalf of all the participants of ArtPositive.

“Stigma and discrimination results in people being treated differently, excluded from essential services or being subject to undue restrictions on how they live their lives, simply because of who they are. It is great to see how a community of artists living with HIV uses art as a medium to raise awareness and to challenge the drivers of stigma and discrimination among the wider public,” said Laurel Sprague, UNAIDS Special Adviser for Community Mobilization.

A new report released today highlights the impact of the United Kingdom’s decision to cut its level of official development assistance from 0.7% to 0.5% of gross national income. The report, Jeopardising Progress: Impact of UK Government AIDS Cuts on HIV/AIDS Worldwide, is the work of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on HIV/AIDS, Stop AIDS and Frontline AIDS.

The report warns that the world is sleepwalking towards a new AIDS emergency and says that urgent action is needed to get the HIV response back on track. It shows how COVID-19 has disrupted HIV services, leading to significant declines in HIV testing and referrals to treatment around the world.

The UNAIDS Executive Director, Winnie Byanyima, met British parliamentarians to discuss the findings of the report during her visit to London earlier this month.

Ms Byanyima also met the Secretary of State for Health, Sajid Javid, and the Minister for European Neighbourhood and the Americas at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Wendy Morton. During the meetings, Ms Byanyima praised the United Kingdom’s own progress against the HIV epidemic and said the country’s leadership and participation in the global AIDS response was needed now more than ever.

GENEVA, 6 July 2021—UNAIDS is deeply concerned by new legislation in Hungary that includes discriminatory amendments against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people.

The amendments include banning the dissemination of content in schools and public service announcements deemed to “promote gender identity different from sex assigned at birth, the change of sex and homosexuality” to people under the age of 18 years. The amendments were tacked on to a popular bill to increase the criminalization of paedophilia, which was signed into law by Hungary’s President, János Áder, on 23 June 2021.

“The association of sexual orientation and gender identity with criminal acts such paedophilia is not only wrong, it is intolerable,” said Winnie Byanyima, the Executive Director of UNAIDS. “To end the AIDS epidemic, we need laws that protect, not harm, already marginalized communities.”

Criminalization and discrimination against LGBTI people hinder the availability, access and uptake of HIV prevention, testing, treatment, and care and support services. Data from UNAIDS show that knowledge of HIV status among gay men and other men who have sex with men who are living with HIV was three times higher in countries with the least repressive LGBTI laws than in countries with the most repressive LGBTI laws.

In response to a recent question on the new law, the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, said, “No discrimination is acceptable in any circumstances, and any discrimination against LGBTIQ+ people is totally unacceptable in our modern societies.”

The new legislation will also present new barriers to addressing discrimination against LGBTI people in school settings. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Global Education Monitoring Report, launched last May, more than half of LGBTI students in Europe have experienced bullying in school at least once based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression or variations of sex characteristics.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, called the Hungarian bill a “shame”, saying that it “clearly discriminates against people on the basis of their sexual orientation and goes against the fundamental principles of the European Union.”

In the recently adopted Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS: Ending Inequalities and Getting on Track to End AIDS by 2030, United Nations Member States committed to “urgent and transformative action to end the social, economic, racial and gender inequalities, restrictive and discriminatory laws, policies and practices, stigma and multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, including based on HIV status, and human rights violations that perpetuate the global AIDS epidemic.”

UNAIDS will continue to advocate with legislators, other government authorities and civil society around the world to establish anti-discrimination and protective laws, to eliminate the discrimination and violence faced by LGBTI people and to advance the right to health for all people without exception.

UNAIDS

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizations—UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank—and works closely with global and national partners towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more at unaids.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.