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.
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 Middle Eastern, 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 Middle Eastern, 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.