LUV is an Endorser of the HIV2020 Conference in Mexico City

HIV2020: Community Reclaiming the Global Response
Mexico City, July 6-8, 2020
www.hiv2020.org

—Background—

Human rights conditions in the United States of America (U.S.) have worsened, since the presidential election of Donald Trump. This is especially true for immigrants from Muslim, African, Caribbean and Latin American countries, as well as for people of color, people who use drugs, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and sex workers. Legal travel restrictions imposed by the U.S. on sex workers and people who use drugs, will make it very difficult for our communities to enter the country.

Against the recommendations of community advocates worldwide, including the national networks of people living with HIV in the U.S., the International AIDS Society (IAS) chose the U.S. as the site for its next International AIDS Conference in 2020. Their decision creates a dilemma for many in the global HIV movement and reveals a willingness by mainstream HIV actors to tolerate the discrimination of people from Muslim, African, Caribbean and Latin American countries, people who use drugs, sex workers, transgender people in U.S. immigration and travel policies. The decision also resurfaces questions about the importance and community-relevance of large, multi-million-dollar conferences in the face of shrinking investment in the global HIV response. The costs of medicines and other barriers to HIV prevention, care, and treatment services like stigma, discrimination, violence, and criminalization, continue to plague the HIV response worldwide.

—Response—

An alliance of global key population-led networks, networks of people living with HIV, treatment activists, and our supporters, has formed to organize an alternative international community-led event. Titled, HIV2020: Community Reclaiming the Global Response, the event is scheduled to take place in Mexico City, July 6-8, 2020, and will run concurrently with the first half of the international AIDS conference. The HIV2020 alliance has decided to organize the community-led event to provide a safe alternative for individuals who cannot or will not enter the U.S. in 2020 or who cannot afford to attend AIDS2020. It will also offer new opportunities to reaffirm the leading role communities play in the global HIV response.

HIV2020 will be key population-led, inter-disciplinary, sex positive, and will focus on the following topics: community-led responses to HIV; funding and service disparities; sexual and reproductive health and rights; universal health coverage; decriminalization of HIV transmission, exposure, and non-disclosure, drug use, homosexuality, and sex work; gender equity and trans inclusion; economic and racial justice; eliminating homophobia, transphobia, and whorephobia; ending violence against cis and transgender women, gay men, sex workers, and people who use drugs; and coalition work. Specifically, HIV2020 aims to:

1. Build safe and friendly space for the equitable exchange of information, knowledge, experiences and expertise by ensuring diverse voices are heard and reflected;
2. Promote community-led solutions and good practice in sexual health and human rights;
3. Amplify community voices in calling out the inequities experienced across key populations and specific legal restrictions on some key populations’ right to freedom of movement;
4. Demonstrate the importance of meaningful involvement of communities in health and human rights responses;
5. Reaffirm community commitments and priorities to global health and human rights responses (inclusive of HIV);
6. Model an innovative approach for deliberating new research, tools, and strategies and their real-life implications, with communities as equal partners.

—Call to Action—

We are calling for advocates, community-based organizations, healthcare and services providers, researchers, public health officials, and funders to stand in solidarity with HIV2020. Collectively, we must insist on the meaningful engagement of people living with and disproportionately affected by HIV in the global response. And we must stand together against the discrimination of people from Muslim, African, Caribbean and Latin American countries, people who use drugs, sex workers, and transgender people.

—Become an Endorser—

We are seeking organizations to sign onto the above statement, as well as to issue their own statements of solidarity and to commit to disseminating information about HIV2020 as it becomes available.

Individuals are invited to participate with conversations online with the hashtag #ReclaimTheResponse

To become an endorser, sign up here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *