On 8-10 June in New York HLM on HIV/AIDS was held. Such meetings are held every 5 years, they are devoted to discussion of progress and challenges connected to implementation of sustainable development goals and fighting AIDS. It has to mentioned, that on the meeting UN tried to consider interests of communities – communities’ representatives were in working group while preparation for the meeting, they also were representatives of official delegations. However, priorities set by communities of MSM, TG, SW and PUD (complete funding, decriminalization of key groups and complete sexual education) were practically ignored. Political declaration was adopted on this meeting.

New Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS – is a new tool for advocacy on national and regional level.

New declaration specifically highlights importance of HIV/AIDS issue in EECA region. This is the only region where amount of new transmission grows and Millennium Development Goals on HIV/AIDS are not achieved.

During next 5 years new political declaration is a key political document for communities. It encourages to adopt fast track strategy and promote fighting HIV/AIDS to achieve sustainable development goals to 2030.

Particularly, to 2020 the declaration plans:

• to double amount of people having treatment among adults, youth and children;
• to have bigger coverage of prevention;
• to cut new cases of transmission among adults, youth and children;
• to promote harm reduction programs and increase their scale.

New declaration puts emphasize on gender aspects, women, girls, teenagers, right for health, isolation removal, funding and sustainability, non-discriminative approach.

Important aspect of declaration is distinguishing groups of risk and fixing problems in conformity to each key group (point 43). For advocacy purposes it is very important to refer to this point to show governments and countries that this argument was supported and reflected in the declaration.

Amount of quota for prevention programs has to be mentioned separately. In accordance with the declaration, funding for prevention purposes has to be not less than a quarter of average global expenses to fight ADIS.

Basically, New Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS is just a document. To make it work for the sake of civil society and communities, it is highly recommended to refer to the declaration while contacting governments, representatives of governmental institutions etc., to remind them of responsibilities they took.

You can see complete text of declaration here.