Inad Quinones RendonWhy are we here? What are we fighting for?
Are we here to heal the world? Make it a better place, for you and for me, and the entire human race? – Michael Jackson.
I know one thing. As a person living with HIV, I am here grounded on my lived experiences to fight for the long and quality of life of the people living with HIV. My name is Inad Quinones Rendon. I represent the Global Network of People living with HIV. As we proceed, we must recognize the diversity within PLHIV communities: key populations, women, men, infants, children, ageing community, people with disabilities, migrants and PLHIVs who are internally displaced due to humanitarian crises and armed conflict, among others.
GNP+ has been engaged with sustainability conversations since 2022. Together with the global key population networks, The Global Network of People Living with HIV occupy a leadership role towards ensuring the future of HIV response and HIV movement. In the country-level sustainability discussions, we recognize that there are two key players: the government and the community of people living with HIV. Our World AIDS Day 2025 report on minimum requirements that PLHIV networks lays down the non‑negotiables for integrating HIV services into broader health systems. These asks reflect the collective voice of over 1,800 PLHIV leaders worldwide
Part 1 – To keep responses people-centred and protect PLHIV-led services,
Engagements of PLHIV networks must be institutionalized in the adaptations of national HIV integration frameworks. Prioritizing the participation and engagement of PLHIV and their networks should not be tokenistic but should be deliberate, intentional, and transformative, where we are included in considering the options of what works for us, making those decisions, and taking collective action.
Integration should be clearly defined and shaped by local context and realities. Integration should enable services to address the needs of infants, children, ageing community, migrants and PLHIV who are displaced due to conflict. Integration must enable social support, economic development, and programs that allow us to become productive citizen of our respective nations.
Let us not forget advanced HIV diseases.
Integration must build on and not replace the response. Integration must not be invisibilization of people living with HIV. Integration must guarantee dignity, confidentiality, and freedom from discrimination.
Beyoncé has this song “To the left, to the left. Everything you own on the box to the left. Don’t you ever get to thinking that you are irreplaceable.”
I wish to borrow and rephrase those words. “to the front. To the front. The community of people living with HIV to the front. Because we are irreplaceable.”
Part 2 – what do you need from the PCB, governments, and partners to make this a reality?
I thank the honorable PCB Members in this room in saying that community involvement and community leadership is important. But we must go beyond this rhetoric.
First: The current global frameworks must do more than just support PLHIV-led services. The global frameworks must recognize, prioritize and institutionalize the leadership of PLHIV as core of the program and central to the HIV response.
Write our leadership on paper.
Second: We must look at how the funding is ‘structured’ into the systems – rather than how the funding is ‘given’ or ‘provided’. Sustainable HIV responses require funding mechanisms that consistently resource PLHIV organisations with sufficient, flexible, and empowering funding models.
We must be resourced through models that are structured within the national budgets to strengthen our leadership, and strengthen our accountability within national HIV responses.
Third.: We must link capacity strengthening to leadership and sustainability. Targeted capacity strengthening is essential to equip us with the skills, systems, and resources needed to lead policy advocacy and deliver integrated HIV services effectively. Investing in the capacity PLHIVs is foundational to realizing equitable, integrated HIV services that reflect our lived realities and uphold our human rights.
Fourth: While some may argue that structural and legal barriers hinder the allocation of domestic public resources to support organisations led by PLHIV and KP, it is also very critical that we acknowledge that – in certain national contexts – such support may be fundamentally IMPOSSIBLE.
This is not merely a matter of policy design or administrative will. This is rooted in deeper legal and political constraints.
The criminalization of people living with HIV, sex workers, and people who use drugs, and the exclusion of trans persons in some countries directly prevents to register organisations, or access public funding mechanisms. They are excluded from institutional recognition. Any effort to promote domestic financing for PLHIV-led/key population-led HIV responses must be grounded in this nuanced understanding of legal, political, and social realities.
In the shrinking of resources, in the changing of governments, in the restructuring of institutions, the people living with HIV will remain. Not because we are resilient. When we are forced to be resilient, that means something in the system is broken.
To my PLHIV community, there is no rest for us. Because there is no rest for the wicked! And we are wicked!
We are wicked because we are driven.
We are wicked because our fire comes from our lived experiences.
We are wicked because we will and we shall refuse to accept systems that fail us.
Thank you.
