Across the world, gender inequality, violence, poverty and insecurity continue to stoke excessive HIV risk among women and girls, especially those in marginalized and excluded communities. Learn more about zero discrimination against women and girls.

Global data have highlighted the challenges in reaching desirable health outcomes for men in the HIV response. However, the voluntary medical male circumcision programme is a good example of an intervention that has consistently managed to reach men with good-quality HIV services for more than a decade.

The number people newly infected with HIV in eastern Europe and central Asia increased by 29% between 2010 and 2018. Key populations are disproportionately affected, and they lack access to the HIV services they need. Despite expanded HIV testing services, antiretroviral therapy coverage in the region is lower than in most other regions. Large proportions of people diagnosed with HIV are not being linked to HIV treatment and care.

Neglected tropical diseases continue to affect people who live under dire socioeconomic conditions in the poorest parts of the world — people who the global health and development community have promised not to leave behind. Female genital schistosomiasis (FGS), is a waterborne neglected tropical disease of poverty affecting 56 million African women and girls. Yet FGS remains underreported, under- and misdiagnosed and largely untreated.

In 2014, the UNAIDS Joint Programme played a central role in halting a wave of human rights violations against sex workers in Tajikistan. A renewed crackdown in 2016 means that UNAIDS close collaboration with civil society is more important than ever. Read other documents in the UNAIDS in Focus series

Since 2014, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has been the source of a major migratory movement that has spread across Latin America and the Caribbean. Migrants face intersecting vulnerabilities to HIV and barriers to accessing health care that require interagency, cross-border responses. governments, civil society organizations and communities, supported by the UN Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and other United Nations agencies, are working within the country and across the region to address these vulnerabilities, realize migrants’ right to health and end the AIDS epidemic. Read other documents in the UNAIDS in Focus series

Punitive legal environments—coupled with stigma and discrimination and violence—continue to undermine efforts to end the aids epidemic. In Nigeria, UNAIDS mobilized lawyers, civil society organizations and people living with and at risk of HIV in order to form the Coalition of Lawyers for Human Rights. This coalition provides legal advice and representation to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people, people living with hiv, sex workers and people who inject drugs. Read other documents in the UNAIDS in Focus series