Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jul 31 2008 (IPS) – Anuar Luna was diagnosed with HIV 17 years ago. I had to overcome feelings of guilt, fear and shame before I became a leader in the HIV-positive community, she said Thursday at the opening of Living 2008: The Positive Leadership Summit, in the Mexican capital.
Luna is now one of the leading activists in defence of the rights of people living with HIV and the fight against AIDS in Mexico.
But despite the influence and visibility gained by the movement over the last decade, people living with HIV continue to face discrimination, isolation, and criminalisation for HIV transmission.
Although success has been achieved in terms of access to medicine and treatment, stigma and discrimination continue to tarnish these accomplishments, Peter Piot, executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), said at the opening ceremony of Living 2008.
The two-day International People Living with HIV (PLHIV) conference, which has drawn around 350 delegates of organisations of HIV-positive people from around the world, is organised by a consortium of non-governmental groups committed to strengthening the movement of people living with HIV, and sponsored by foundations, donors and international bodies.
A 1983 national AIDS conference in the U.S. city of Denver, Colorado is considered to have marked the birth of the PLHIV movement, when a group of HIV/AIDS activists publicly expressed for the first time the needs and demands of people living with HIV, voicing the idea that their personal experiences should help shape the design of policies.
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The movement took on an international dimension when 42 countries signed the Paris Declaration, also known as the Declaration on the Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV/AIDS (GIPA), at the 1994 Paris AIDS summit. The document helped pave the way for the U.N. Declaration of Commitment and People Living with HIV, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2001.
Luna, a co-founder of the Mexican Network of People Living with HIV, said that a feeling of survival led us to hold demonstrations and fight for our rights.
In Paraguay, we have a law that allows discriminatory practices, María Ferreira, secretary general of the non-governmental Fundación Vencer, told IPS, referring to her country s legislation on HIV/AIDS.
We want to modify it so that people living with HIV don t lose their jobs and are not barred from schools because of the disease, she said.
The Fundación Vencer, which brings together HIV-positive people, is a pioneer in the fight against AIDS in Paraguay.
Living 2008 is discussing issues like universal access to treatment, support for people living with HIV, AIDS prevention, sexual and reproductive rights, and the criminalisation of HIV transmission.
It is one of the many activities in the run-up to the 17th International AIDS Conference or AIDS 2008 , which will be held Aug. 3-8 in the Mexican capital with the participation of some 25,000 researchers, delegates of international bodies, and representatives of the governments of 150 nations.
According to the UNAIDS global report 2008, released Tuesday, there were an estimated 33 million people living with HIV worldwide in 2007, with nearly 7,500 new infections a day, while some two million people died of AIDS last year.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, an estimated 1.7 million people are HIV-positive, and 63,000 died of AIDS-related causes in 2007.
In this region, the number of people receiving antiretroviral treatment has grown to 390,000, but another 630,000 do not receive the life-extending drugs.
An effective response to the epidemic will not be possible without the active participation of those living with the disease, said Piot.
In Uganda, where only 600,000 of the 1.2 million people living with HIV receive antiretroviral therapy, the most serious problem is the criminalisation of the transmission of HIV among gay men.
There are two cases that have not yet been resolved; if the accused are found guilty, they could be sentenced to two years in prison, Sam Mugisha, with Red Cross Uganda, told IPS.
International pressure is necessary to change the laws, and that is not happening, said Mugisha, who added that in Uganda there are nine organisations involved in the fight against AIDS.
Studies presented Thursday at Living 2008 reflect an increase in persecution through laws on AIDS and other legislation. The criminalisation of HIV transmission is counterproductive for public health and is not a solution for curbing the epidemic, according to the reports.
To deal with such reactions, organisations of people living with HIV have been focusing on leadership training.
A survey discussed at the conference shows that 96 percent of respondents considered leadership important, 86 percent said they felt ready to take part in public activities, and 71 percent said networks of HIV-positive people promote the emergence of leaders.
The 10-question survey was carried out in the first two weeks of July in three languages. Seventy percent of interviewees said they belonged to networks and 94 percent said the voice of people living with HIV was important.
International People Living with HIV conferences have been held regularly in different locations around the world since 1986, with the latest organised in Poland (1999), Trinidad and Tobago (2001) and Uganda (2003). The conclusions of The Positive Leadership Summit will be presented at next week s AIDS 2008 conference.
The consortium that organised Living 2008 consists of the Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (GNP+), International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (ICW), International Council of AIDS Service Organisations (ICASO), International HIV/AIDS Alliance, International AIDS Society (IAS), International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), Mexican Network of People Living with HIV, Sidaction, UNAIDS, and World Health Organisation (WHO).
