Advocacy

A new report by UNAIDS demonstrates the critical role communities play, and how underfunding and harmful barriers are holding back their lifesaving work and obstructing the end of AIDS.

LONDON/GENEVA, 28 November 2023—As World AIDS Day (1 December) approaches, UNAIDS is urging governments across the world to unleash the power of grassroots communities across the world to lead the fight to end AIDS. A new report launched today by UNAIDS, Let Communities Lead, shows that AIDS can be ended as a public health threat by 2030, but only if communities on the frontlines get the full support they need from governments and donors.

“Communities across the world have shown that they are ready, willing and able to lead the way. But they need the barriers obstructing their work to be pulled down, and they need to be properly resourced,” said Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS. “Too often, communities are treated by decision-makers as problems to be managed, instead of being recognised and supported as leaders. Communities are not in the way, they light the way to the end of AIDS.”

The report, launched in London during a World AIDS Day event organized by the civil society organization STOPAIDS, shows how communities have been the driving force for progress.

Community advocacy from the streets to the courtrooms to parliaments has secured groundbreaking changes in policy. Communities’ campaigning helped open up access to generic HIV medicines, leading to sharp, sustained reductions in the cost of treatment from US$ 25 000 per person per year in 1995 to less than US$ 70 in many countries most affected by HIV today.

Let Communities Lead shows that investing in community-led HIV programmes delivers transformational benefits. It sets out how programmes delivered by community-based organizations in Nigeria were associated with a 64% increase in access to HIV treatment, a doubling of the likelihood of HIV prevention service utilization, and a four-fold increase in consistent condom use among people at risk of HIV. It also notes how, among sex workers reached by a package of peer-based services in the United Republic of Tanzania, the HIV incidence rate was reduced to below half (5% vs 10.4%).

“We are the vehicle for change that can end systematic injustices that continue to fuel HIV transmission. We have seen groundbreaking developments with U=U, improved access to medicines, and have made great strides in decriminalisation," said Robbie Lawlor, Co-Founder of Access to Medicines Ireland. “Yet, we are expected to move mountains without being financially supported. We are supposed to fight for a more equitable world and are tasked with dismantling stigma yet are side-lined in crucial discussions. We are at a tipping point. Communities can no longer be relegated to the periphery. The time for leadership is now.”

The report highlights how communities are at the forefront of innovation. In Windhoek, Namibia, a self-funded project by the youth Empowerment Group is using e-bikes to deliver HIV medicines, food and adherence support to young people who often cannot attend clinics due to their schooling hours. In China, community organizations developed smartphone apps that link people to self-testing which contributed to a more than four-fold increase in HIV tests across the country from 2009 to 2020.

The report reveals how communities are also holding service providers to account. In South Africa five community networks of people living with HIV inspected 400 sites across 29 districts and conducted more than 33 000 interviews with people living with HIV. In the Free State province, these findings led provincial health officials to implement new appointment protocols to reduce clinic wait times and three- and six-month dispensing of antiretroviral medicines.

“I am extremely concerned about the exclusion from health services of key populations like the LGBT+ community,” said Andrew Mitchell, Minister of State for Development and Africa. “The UK champions the rights of such communities, and we will continue to protect them, working closely with our partners in civil society. I thank UNAIDS for keeping us focused on the inequities driving the pandemic and I look forward to working with our partners to champion the voice of people living with HIV and end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.”

Despite the clear evidence of community-led impact, community-led responses are unrecognized, under-resourced and in some places even under attack. Crackdowns on civil society and on the human rights of marginalized communities are obstructing communities from providing HIV prevention and treatment services. Underfunding of community-led initiatives is leaving them struggling to continue operating and holding them back from expansion. If these obstacles are removed, community-led organizations can add even greater impetus to end AIDS.

In the 2021 Political Declaration on ending AIDS, United Nations member states recognized the critical role communities play in HIV service delivery, particularly to people most at risk of HIV. However, whereas in 2012, when over 31% of HIV funding was channelled through civil society organizations, ten years later, in 2021, only 20% of funding for HIV was available—an unprecedented backsliding in commitments which has cost and is continuing to cost lives.

“At this time, community-led action is the most important countermeasure in the AIDS response,” said Solange Baptiste, Executive Director of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition. “Yet, shockingly, it isn’t a cornerstone of global plans, agendas, strategies, or financing mechanisms for improving pandemic preparedness and health for all. It is time to change that.”

Every minute, a life is lost to AIDS. Every week, 4000 girls and young women become infected with HIV, and out of the 39 million people living with HIV, 9.2 million do not have access to lifesaving treatment. There is a Path that Ends AIDS and AIDS can be ended by 2030, but only if communities lead.

UNAIDS is calling for: Communities’ leadership roles to be made core in all HIV plans and programmes; Communities’ leadership roles to be fully and reliably funded; And for barriers to communities’ leadership roles to be removed.

The report features nine guest essays from community leaders, in which they share their experience on the achievements they have secured, the barriers they face, and what the world needs to end AIDS as a public health threat.

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.

Standing outside of the cinema house, Rodrigo de Oliveira felt exhilarated by his attendance at more than 40 film festivals around the world to promote his HIV-themed feature film, “The First Fallen.”

“A sense of community is an abstract thing but I have seen the faces of many LGBTQI people during my tour,” he said. “And in a way that is what I tried to show in my movie.”

The film opens on New Year’s eve in 1983. A young man is back in his Brazilian hometown having returned from Paris. He is feeling a bit gloomy and distant. He fears he has come down with something. There are rumblings of an unknown illness but AIDS or HIV is never mentioned until the last scene. De Oliveira chronicles the slow unravelling of the young man’s health who “disappears” and hides in a country house. He is joined by a transgender woman and another acquaintance also feeling ill.  They get various pills from a boyfriend in Paris. Some are early anti-retroviral pills but there are also vitamins and shark fin pills. All three despair at being struck down by a random disease.

“For me there is hope in knowledge, that is fundamental, but as you can see community and support are key to overcome anything,” Mr de Oliveira said.

Rubbing his bald head with his hand he reflected that after seven feature films, this was his first one addressing LGBTQ and HIV issues.

"It took longer for my films to come out of the closet than myself,” he said. “In 2021 I was still fresh-faced on the scene as an out gay man and I lost people to AIDS so this felt like a responsibility to the people I saw disappear in my life.”

Born in 1985, Mr de Oliveira said he thought about HIV every week of his life. For him (as shown in the film) HIV meant death in the 80s and 90s. Since life-saving HIV treatment became readily available, living a healthy life with HIV has become the norm.

Mr de Oliveira explained that during one film screening young people did not know what it meant when two of the characters in his movie showed signs of Kaposi’s Sarcoma (flat, discolored reddish patches on the skin, an indication of cancer triggered by a weak immune system in people living with HIV who are not taking medicine.)

“It was a shock for me this gap in knowledge,” he said. Showing a slice of life from the mid-80s in his native country made even more sense to him following that conversation.

“The LGBTQI community is so used to being left out, we have to document ourselves and this is a testimony of this,” Mr de Oliveira said. “My film with its three main characters approach their ‘random illness’ differently...one is a fighter, the other an archivist and the third an artist/scientist,” he explained.

The three perspectives were important for him to document the fear, the dread and the conscious effort to overcome the crisis. By barely mentioning HIV, de Oliveira wanted to illustrate the ‘grand silence’ around the illness at the time.

In one scene, the young man’s sister demands to see her brother in a run-down clinic but she is frozen out with staff saying, ‘shame will close them down.’ 

“I wanted to talk about the stigma and discrimination, but I could not imagine staging actual aggression,” he said.  

Suki Beavers, UNAIDS Director of Gender Equality, Human Rights and Community Engagement, who shared the stage with Mr de Oliveira at a recent film screening in Geneva during the Everybody’s Perfect film festival, said that the movie reflected people’s lack of rights. And that intersecting inequalities like being poor or being transgender or being gay or not having gone to school only compounded the hardships (the transgender character is fuming at being thrown off a bus after an altercation in one scene.)

“You see a clear violation of rights in Brazil during the 80s as well as activism to reclaim those rights,” she said. “This phenomena is still very much alive in many parts of the world to this day, which is why we cannot give up on the fight to end AIDS.”

Mr de Oliveira added that despite his film’s more sombre note, he wanted people to walk away with the feeling that love is universal. “The kiss between budding friends exemplifies that we will overcome,” he said.

He said that he would like to do two more feature films focusing on the evolution of the AIDS response like chronicling the 90s and then the last two decades.

“It takes me four to five years to make a film but know that I am on the same page as UNAIDS... ending AIDS,” he said. “I just wish I could make a film a day like you save a life a day.”

An estimated 80 000 people have taken part in the Kabaka Birthday Run, an annual event that forms part of the celebrations to mark the birthday of Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II of Buganda. For the last three years, the run’s theme has been “Men for Good Health and Ending AIDS by 2030.”  

The run is part of the Kabaka’s five-year campaign to increase the uptake of HIV testing and treatment services, with a particular focus on men and boys. It has yielded remarkable results in the Buganda region, with new HIV infections down more than in any other region of Uganda over the last few years. 

The campaign is called “Men are Stars - Abaami Munyeenye” and connects men and boys aged 15—49 years old to HIV testing, treatment and care services, especially in the areas most affected by the pandemic. Through events such as the Kabaka Birthday Run, the Masaza football cup, the royal boat regatta, traditional campfire centres, school camps, radio and television shows, men and boys learn about the importance of going for regular health check-ups, including for HIV testing.

UNAIDS Executive Director, Winnie Byanyima, who attended the run in Mengo paid tribute to the Kabaka’s contribution to reducing the impact of HIV in Buganda.

“Your Majesty, under your leadership and through your messages to men and boys, Buganda has made remarkable progress against the AIDS pandemic in the last five years,” said Ms Byanyima, “UNAIDS looks forward to strengthening our partnership to reach other vulnerable groups such as young women and adolescent girls and to get Africa on track to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.”             

In recognition of his significant contribution to the AIDS response, Ms Byanyima confirmed the Kabaka in his role as UNAIDS Africa Goodwill Ambassador. 

A poster exhibition entitled YES…BUT! highlights the disparities existing in the HIV response in eastern Europe and central Asia (EECA). Some posters display important key facts and figures on the progress made as well as the current gaps hindering progress in the region. Others focus on the impact that AIDS-related stigma and discrimination has on people living with HIV in eastern Europe and central Asia.

For example, one poster highlights that while all people living with HIV are eligible to start HIV treatment immediately regardless of their CD4 count, there has been a 32% increase in AIDS-related death in the region since 2010. Another one focuses on the fact that, even though HIV self-testing and free anonymous HIV testing are available and accessible in most countries, every second an HIV diagnosis is made late—and one in three is made very late.

Tahmina Khaidarova, Director of the Tajikistan Network of Women Living with HIV is convinced that one of the reasons for widespread late diagnosis and increased number of deaths is the stigma that continues to prevent people from accessing HIV testing. “I told my story to help women who live in a vicious cycle of stigma. Stigma makes us vulnerable. We must fight. And first of all, we fight our own fears.” says Mrs Khaidarova in one of the posters.

The EECA region has the fastest-growing HIV epidemic in the world. The war in Ukraine places under huge strain the hard-won gains made in recent years in the HIV response in the countries involved and in the entire region.  

“We must keep the HIV epidemic in the region in the spotlight and support the resilience of people, community-led organizations, and countries to ensure the AIDS response succeeds,” said Eamonn Murphy, Deputy Executive Director, Regional Director for Eastern Europe and central Asia a.i. 

The posters will be shown at the UNAIDS Regional Cluster Meeting for eastern Europe and central Asia to take place in Geneva, from 14 to 17 June 2022.

World AIDS Day 2021 saw the authorities in the Central African Republic and others involved in the HIV response in the country come together to provide information on HIV, promote HIV prevention, treatment and care and show their solidarity in the face of the pandemic. This year, the President and Head of State of the Central African Republic, and President of the National AIDS Council, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, presided over the ceremony in the commune of Bégoua, near the capital, Bangui.

In line with the Dakar Call to Reinvent the Response to the HIV Pandemic, adopted at the recent High-Level Regional Summit on HIV/AIDS in Western and Central Africa, Mr Touadéra urged the Ministers of Health and Population and of Budget and Finance to ensure that 500 million central African francs is included in the government’s 2022 budget for the HIV response. He also tasked the Prime Minister to report on the actions taken in the HIV response. One of the four pillars of the Dakar Call to Action is to increase national and international resources devoted to HIV in the region by 33% by 2025.

Mr Touadéra also noted the importance of removing financial barriers to accessing health services for people living with HIV.

Bienvenu Gazalima, the President of the Network of People Living with HIV in the Central African Republic (RECAPEV), said that, “Access to antiretroviral drugs has improved, from 12% of all people living with HIV in 2013 to 58% by the end of 2020, but remains one of the lowest in the world. HIV treatment is available in only 10% of the country’s health facilities.”

On the eve of the World AIDS Day commemoration, messages from the Minister of Health and Population and UNAIDS were broadcast on major radio stations and national television. Information on preventing new HIV and COVID-19 infections was given out, especially to young people, in several provinces of the country. With the support of UNAIDS, sensitization caravans criss-crossed the streets of Bangui for several days to spread messages on HIV transmission, HIV prevention, vulnerability to HIV and HIV-related discrimination.

“We are at a crossroads. Leaders have a choice between bold actions and half measures. The transformative approach we need to end AIDS will also protect humanity from future pandemics,” said Marie Engel, UNAIDS Country Director for the Central African Republic, a.i. 

by Edwin Cameron

On 1 December, we mark World AIDS Day.

This year marks a sombre anniversary.  On 5 June 2021, it was forty years since disturbingly unexplained cases of illness and death – later called AIDS – were first officially tabulated.  These four decades have yielded enormous medical and scientific progress – but too many deaths and far too much stigma remain very much with us.

Too many still elude testing, or die in silence and shame; treatment does not reach all who need it – and inequality and discrimination impede our global response.

Today, I am able to pen this because life unexpectedly afforded me survival from AIDS.  Twenty four years ago, I started on life-saving antiretroviral treatment – enabling me to bear witness to how discriminatory laws and policies damage those this fearsome epidemic imperils.  Let me explain.

Around Easter 1985, in my early 30s and setting out on my career, I became infected with HIV.  In those terrible years, no treatment existed: HIV meant certain death.  Stigma and fear choked all who had or were suspected of having HIV or AIDS.

Like many others, I kept my HIV a secret.  I hoped against hope that I would escape the spectre of death.  No.  Twelve years later, AIDS felled my body.  With the certainty of death impending, I became terribly ill.

But my privileges gave me access to treatment and care.  I had loving family and friends, and my job as a judge to return to.  With early access to antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, I survived.

In 1999, I spoke publicly about living with HIV.  I explained that ARVs had saved me from certain death – but that millions more in Africa were denied them. 

Today, I remain one of the only people holding public office in Africa to speak publicly about being gay and about living with HIV.  I say this not to claim credit, but because so much shame, fear, ignorance and discrimination still silence too many in too many places.

From my life, in my own deepest being, I know the power of stigma, discrimination, hatred and exclusion.

And, after twenty-five years as a judge, I have been witness to three facts. First, the destructive power of stigma and shame.  Second, the damage punitive and discriminatory laws inflict on public health responses.  Finally, how insufficient legal protections and inadequate legal remedies make the cruel load of HIV/AIDS infinitely worse.

Why equality is at the heart of the response to HIV/AIDS

Some 37.7 million people globally are living with HIV. For most of us, heartening developments have alleviated the burdens of death and illness and shame.  Today, we can fulfil our aspiration to reach the 90-90-90 target (90% of those with HIV must know their status, 90% of them to access treatment, and 90% of those to attain viral suppression).

In Africa, the epidemic however has a particular poignancy. Two-thirds of HIV cases are in Sub-Saharan Africa – and here young women make up 63% of new HIV infections.

As acutely, key populations (sex workers, LGBTQI+ people, drug users, those incarcerated, men who have sex with men) account for 65% of new HIV infections worldwide.

Given these striking facts, the new strategy the UN body fighting to mitigate the epidemic – UNAIDS – announced was welcome.  This highlights how inequalities exacerbate AIDS.  Ending them is therefore at the core of UNAIDS’s new approach.

A rights-based approach is right.  It illuminates how human rights are all interconnected. The AIDS epidemic vividly instances this: the right to health cannot, in though or practice, be disconnected from the right to equality.

The lesson is clear: to overcome AIDS by 2030, we must achieve greater equality for all.

The good news is that protecting and respecting rights works in mitigating AIDS.  Evidence from UNAIDS powerfully shows how “inequalities fuel the HIV epidemic and block progress towards ending AIDS.”  As The Lancet rightly notes: “The success of the HIV response is predicated on equality – not only equality in access to prevention, care, and treatment … but also equality under the law.”

Human rights programs and sensible law reforms reduce stigma and discrimination.  Yet far too little funding and effort is channeled here.  The result is plain – in far too many societies, stigma sits as a dark burden on the backs of those living with and at risk of HIV and AIDS; discrimination permeates the societies and their laws – and repeal of misplaced, punitive laws is agonizingly slow.

No to punitive and discriminatory laws

Punitive and discriminatory laws target key populations most at risk of HIV/AIDS.  They hit on peoples’ sexual orientation, gender identity, HIV status, drug use, and sex work.

Thus, too many countries still criminalize LGBTQI+ persons.  And transgender women are at enormously higher risk of contracting HIV.

And no one suffers discrimination solely on only one ground.  The poisonous perils of discrimination mingle in a multiplicity of hostile grounds – what is rightly called “intersectionality”.  A sex worker is attacked for their sexuality, gender, socio-economic status, and HIV status.  The disquieting result: sex workers, have a 26 times higher risk of contracting HIV.

In all this, the brutal force of the criminal law clenches the throat of good AIDS work.  It intensifies inequalities, unfairness and exclusions. 

The point is this: criminalizing people living with HIV and punishing key populations undermines prevention efforts.  It reduces uptake of services.  And it can increase HIV infections.

These punitive laws do not merely “leave people behind”.  They actively shove them out.  They increase fear and stigma – and in turn push those most at risk away from health services and social protections.

As UNAIDS Executive Director, Winnie Byanyima, powerfully recounted, “Stigma killed my brother, he was HIV positive and would be living today but he was afraid to go to the clinic to fetch his ARVs because people he knew would find him there and would judge him.”  Her conclusion?  “We have to fight stigma and discrimination, they kill.”

Additional knock-on effects harm our societies.  Discrimination seeps into data and evidence collecting, where criminalized and stigmatized populations are often under-represented and omitted.

This reflects their day-to-day reality: their experience of an extreme form of stigma – being negated, invisible, wiped out.

This negation is profoundly harmful.  It means that we do not know whether services are accessible and acceptable.  It means important information may not be provided.  It means violence and discrimination against invisible populations remain unknown, unaddressed.

So, we must ask: How can you remove barriers to access services if you do not even see the persons they are crushing? What can we do?

At least one answer: We can help create enabling, empowering, safe-guarding legal environments.

An enabling legal environment

The response to AIDS is linked to democratic values and functioning legal systems. The rule of law, freedom of expression, freedom to protest, and other basic human rights matter.

Creating an enabling legal environment is a critical step.  It means we employ the law to empower rather than oppress.  It means scrapping pointlessly punitive criminal laws. It means achieving equality before the law.

Access to justice, the demand for law reform, awareness as well as education campaigns and vibrant civil society activism, embracing key populations, are pivotal.  These foster beneficial change and help ensure accountability for human rights violations.

The last forty years showed us this.  Brave, principled, outspoken activists, from ACT UP in New York and the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, secured life-saving gains in treatment for AIDS.  The activists’ struggle was for justice and for finding the most effective response to AIDS. In South Africa, the activists challenged President Mbeki’s denialist government in the highest Court – which ordered him to start providing ARVs.

For them, as it was for me, and still is for too many today, the battle was about life versus death, wellness versus sickness, science versus harmful myths, discrimination versus justice and equality – and about how fair practices make sound public health sense and save lives.

The new UNAIDS strategy embraces this history.  It seeks to ensure access to justice and accountability for people living with or affected by HIV and key populations.  Rightly, it calls for: increased collaboration among key stakeholders, for supporting legal literacy programs, and for increased access to legal help.  From the international community, it also provides for substantial commitment, greater investments, and strategic diplomacy.

The Covid-19 pandemic has not alleviated these goals – its impact on inequality has made them more pressing.  Anti-infection lockdowns led to HIV and AIDS service disruptions (healthcare facilities were closed or resources were reallocated to Covid-19 or there were shortages of ARVs).

On the other hand, lessons have been learnt, and mRNA technology could speed up the development of AIDS vaccines.

Though there is still no cure, AIDS is no longer a death sentence.  Twenty four years after taking my first ARVs, I am living a vibrant, joyful life.  Our challenge lies within ourselves, and our societies: it is to overcome fear, discrimination and stigma to ensure life-saving treatments and messages are equally and equitably accessible.

Ending AIDS by 2030 is a realistic goal.  But to achieve it, we must respect, protect and fulfil the basic rights of those living with and at risk of HIV.  We must embrace democratic aspirations, place key populations at the center of our response, provide resources to reduce inequalities as well as inequities, and foster legal environments that enable us to end AIDS.

These harsh last forty years have shown us this: with enough support, science, focus and love, we can end AIDS.

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.

The UNAIDS family is deeply saddened by the death from COVID-19 of our dear colleague and friend, Manuel de Quinta. We offer our deepest condolences to his husband Ricardo and to his family and friends in general. 

Since 2017, Manuel worked as a UNAIDS Community Support and Human Rights Adviser for the multicountry UNAIDS Office for Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. But many of us knew him in the many roles he held and the tremendous work he did around the world as part of the UNAIDS family for more than 24 years advocating for the rights and leadership of people living with HIV and the populations most vulnerable to HIV, including the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community, migrants and refugees, sex workers, indigenous peoples and young people.

Manuel represented the essence of UNAIDS’ mission and vision and the reason why all of us get up every day to fulfil our duties and purpose. As a strong advocate for human rights and social equality, he always stood up against all forms of injustice, including internally at UNAIDS, where for many years he was the Chair of the UNAIDS Staff Association.

Manuel was an HIV activist since 1990 and accumulated a vast experience of community work with organizations working on behalf of people living with HIV in several countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

He joined UNAIDS in 1997, starting in the Communications Department, managing multimedia projects on HIV. Later, in 2005, he co-founded UN Plus, an initiative that brings together United Nations system staff living with HIV. Since then, he has worked in UNAIDS teams in Geneva, Bangkok, Dakar and Buenos Aires.

Manuel was a person with great positive energy, an enormous willingness to make even the impossible possible, bringing a deep passion to everything he undertook. He was also a loyal friend to many of us.

Manuel left us at the early age of 59 years and will be deeply missed.

We wish to express our deep sorrow at his passing and to reiterate our solidarity and warmth to the great community that has worked with Manuel in the HIV response over so many years, and to all those who have known him around the world and who mourn his departure.