In response to recommendations of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, UNAIDS provided this background

This report is the submission at the sixtieth session of the UN General Assembly of the assessment of country-driven processes for scaling up HIV prevention, treatment, care and support, with the aim of coming as close as possible to the goal of universal access to treatment by 2010 for all those who need it.

As the case studies in this volume demonstrate, the law can be protective of human rights, but can also impede their realization. Over the years, people living with or affected by HIV have sometimes successfully claimed the protection of the law. In other instances, courageous
activists have challenged the law to embody the human rights protections they deserve. This volume presents 30 summaries of court or tribunal proceedings aimed at defending or securing the human rights of people living with, or vulnerable to, HIV. With an emphasis on cases from
developing countries, this volume examines key litigation efforts to advance a “human rightsbased approach” to HIV on three fronts: discrimination, access to treatment, and prevention and care for prisoners. Understanding the ways in which litigation has been used in the struggle for human rights, successfully or otherwise, helps legislators, jurists, advocates and policymakers to understand and use the law optimally in the response to AIDS.

This Best Practice Case Study captures lessons learned, keys to success, and challenges that must be met if there is to be optimal access to treatment and care for UN staff and their dependents. It describes UN workplace programmes in Cambodia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda where multi-disciplinary teams are discovering the power of leadership and the value of multidisciplinary interagency approaches.

Growing evidence shows that getting and keeping young people in school, particularly girls, dramatically lowers their vulnerability to HIV. By itself, merely attending primary school makes young people significantly less likely to contract HIV. When young people stay in school through the secondary level, education’s protective effect against HIV is even more pronounced. This is especially true for girls who, with each additional year of education, gain greater independence, are better equipped to make decisions affecting their sexual lives, and have higher income earning potential – all of which help them stay safe from HIV.

This executive summary of the 2006 Report on the global AIDS epidemic provides information on the latest developments in the AIDS epidemic and the AIDS response. The special UNAIDS 10th anniversary edition of the report presents country profiles and estimates of the epidemic’s scope and human toll.

The Global Coalition on Women and AIDS was launched by UNAIDS in 2004 to respond to the increasing feminization of the HIV epidemic and a growing concern that existing AIDS strategies did not adequately address women’s needs. A loose alliance of civil society groups, networks of women living with HIV and United Nations agencies, the Coalition works at global and national levels to advocate for improved AIDS programming for women and girls. It focuses on several key issues: preventing new HIV infections by improving access to reproductive health care; promoting equitable access to HIV care and
treatment; ensuring universal access to education; securing women's property and inheritance rights; reducing violence against women; ensuring that women’s care work is properly supported; advocating for increased research and funding for female-controlled HIV prevention methods; promoting women's leadership in the AIDS response.

The aim of this study is to describe the experiences of and challenges faced by five nongovernmental organizations in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which developed effective practices and implemented promising HIV and sexually transmitted infection prevention programmes for sex workers and their clients. The programmes’ key objective was to decrease sex workers’ vulnerability by improving their overall well being and supporting their empowerment. All organizations operate in low-resource settings and their experiences can be helpful in initiating and moving forward similar projects.

HIV/AIDS: A unique global threat.

Women account for nearly half of HIV infections worldwide
and almost two-thirds of those among young people, with
female infections rising in almost every region. Yet twenty-five years into the global AIDS epidemic, there is still no widely available technology that women can both initiate and control to protect themselves from HIV.