Text of the Speech given by Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS, at the Conclave of the Chief Ministers and Legislators of North-East Indian States during his visit to India, 19 November 2005.

Speech by UNAIDS Executive Director Dr Peter Piot at the 19th meeting of UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board, Lusaka, 6 December 2006

Speech at the OAFLA General Assembly. Sudan. 24 January 2006.

Speech by UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot at the Global Partners Forum on Children Affected by HIV, London, 9 February 2006

Speech by Dr Peter Piot UNAIDS Executive Director, Georgetown University, Washington D.C., 7 March 2006.

Speech by Deborah Landey, UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director, at the South-East Europe Sub-Regional Consultation on scaling-up towards Universal Access on 88 March 2006 in Romania.

The landscape of the fight against AIDS has been transformed in the past 15 months since I last spoke here, on the eve of World Aids Day in 2004. Issues that were gathering momentum then have come to fruition, so I now look at 2005 as the ‘least bad’ year in the history of AIDS. It was a year when hope slowly took over from pure despair in many communities; things that seemed impossible even a few years ago started to become real in 2005.

This regional consultation is the culmination of a country-driven process to concretize three increasingly famous words – towards
universal access.

I am speaking today on the human rights of men who have sex with men and the UNAIDS perspective. Let me start by saying that UNAIDS does not have formal oversight of any human rights treaty, like UNICEF, but like any UN agency, UNAIDS is accountable for respecting and promoting the principles of the UN Charter. For the staff, the Standards of Conduct for the International Civil Service, paragraph 3, state that “The values that are enshrined in the United Nations organizations must also be those that guide international civil servants in all their actions: fundamental human rights, social justice, the dignity and worth of the human person and respect for the equal rights of men and women and of nations great and small.”