Advocacy

Women of the world unite for their rights! The past few days have demonstrated the power and visibility of women at the International AIDS Conference, with hundreds of women and girls’ rights activists leading the charge by marching to the Zocalo (the historic city square) to the beat of “all rights for all women.” Women, men, transgender persons, sex workers, lesbians, adolescents, and gender equality advocates are demanding the fundamental human rights of women and young women: the right to live and make decisions without fear of violence, coercion, stigmatization or discrimination; the right to a free, healthy and safe sex life; the right to dignified work; the right to comprehensive information and services regarding prevention and sex education; the right to life-saving treatment… With women comprising 60% of adults living with HIV and AIDS in many regions of the world, women’s lives hang in balance in the absence of these rights.  read more »

(good thing we're all working on that!)

 

The venerable medical journal the Lancet dedicated its pre-IAC issue to HIV-prevention, what editor Richard Horton called “the neglected issue in the AIDS response.” On Wednesday, contributing authors called for a reinvigorated movement for prevention that demands a comprehensive, multifaceted approach, including structural change. Mirroring the Caucus for Evidence Based Prevention critiques of narrow definitions of evidence, the distinguished panel also called for investment in flexibile, realistic monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.

 

Jeffery O’Malley, director of the HIV and AIDS group at the UN Development Program, opened with the history of HIV-prevention, urging us to remember when prevention and epidemiology were all the AIDS community had enough information talk about. In the early 80s, he recalled, “gay men and drag queens invented safe sex, and they still haven’t been given the Nobel Prize.”

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 An alliance of housing activists took over the space just outside the media center Tuesday at 1pm with a model encampment to dramatize the international crisis of homelessness. Demanding that policymakers recognize that housing needs to be an integral part of any response to the AIDS pandemic, they chanted, "Housing is a human right!" and "Que Queremos? Vivienda Digna!" (What do we want? Housing with dignity!)  read more »

"Rectal microbicides are incredibly important, and need to be developed."

- Zeda Rosenberg, International Partnership for Microbicides

Monday, August 4, AIDS 2008

Read more on the IRMA blog - with link to the session's audio podcast and video as well - courtesy of Kaiser.

Hi friends,

I'm so inspired by the amazing work I'm learning about that's being done all over the world, and the boundless energy of the activists at this humongo-mundo conference. AIDS activists from dramatically different backgrounds and countries are building trust and planning actions together. But there´s always room for growth! In that spirit, I´ve put together some questions for us to think about this week, based on observations other activists have made here at the conference and ideas I´ve borrowed from other movements.

* Did we put enough energy and time into reaching out to local Mexican grassroots AIDS activists before the conference, so we could best understand each other´s struggles, goals for the conference and different strategic approaches, and support each other´s actions this week?  read more »

Translated Document to Enhance Rectal Microbicide Advocacy in the Spanish-Speaking World

Friday, August 1, 2008

Mexico City, Mexico – International Rectal Microbicide Advocates (IRMA) released "Menos Silencio, Más Ciencia" in Mexico City yesterday at a presentation preceding the 17th International AIDS Conference.
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http://sida2008.blogia.com/ is a community blog in Spanish for activists who are participating in and protesting at the Int’l AIDS conference in Mexico City. This was launched as a companion site to AIDS2008.com (although it's unaffiliated and it's pretty scrappy). Please share this announcement with Spanish-speaking allies and groups you know who may be interested in contributing or reading our dispatches!

Por favor, reenvíen este email...

http://sida2008.blogia.com/ - un blog para activistas durante la Conferencia de SIDA!

Usted estará en México para la Conferencia del SIDA?

Hay un blog en que Uds. puede participar - le invitamos a escribir algo sobre activismo y el conferencia del SIDA en Ciudad de México 2008- su experiencia, expectaciones o eventos que ud. quiere publicar. Ud. debe invitar a sus amigos, compadres, hermanas a publicar también.

A escribir por este blog , ir a http://sida2008.blogia.com/, oprima "publicar articulo", escribir un nombre que ud. quiere usar y para "clave" escribir: "justicia"

Un poco de la historia:

Durante este conferencia activistas del todos partes del mundo vienen a protestar gobiernos y grandes compañías farmacéuticos.
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We've got the August 2008 special issue of AIDS which will be released at the IAC. The theme of this special issue is LEAP: Leadership, Equity, Accountability, and Partnerships to provide concrete recommendations for implementing the Ford Foundation's Global HIV/AIDS Initiative. We applaud the journal, the Ford Foundation and the authors for their emphasis on social justice.

Click the article title to jump to the abstract and PDF.

» Creating a world that survives, and thrives, with AIDS
» Moving beyond the alphabet soup of HIV prevention
» The next 5 years of global HIV/AIDS policy: critical gaps and strategies for effective responses
» Leadership development and HIV/AIDS
» Wealth, health, HIV and the economics of hope
» Gender and AIDS: time to act
» Stigma in the HIV/AIDS epidemic: a review of the literature and recommendations for the way forward
» The role of harm reduction in controlling HIV among injecting drug users
» Refocusing and prioritizing HIV programmes in conflict and post-conflict settings: funding recommendations
» Accountability in the global response to HIV: measuring progress, driving change
» Health and human rights in today's fight against HIV/AIDS

 read more »