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The recommendations in this briefing document build on the original Positive Learning publication developed in 2011 by UNESCO and the Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+). With significant changes in both the international education sector and the global HIV response over the past decade, it is now timely to update and ‘reboot’ Positive Learning to address the current daily realities for adolescents and young people living with HIV as they navigate issues such as sexuality, relationships, gender identity and expression, treatment access and adherence.

This revised and updated version is the result of a partnership between UNESCO, GNP+ and the Global Network of Young People Living with HIV (Y+ Global). Y+ Global led a review process that was inclusive, multisectoral and youth-led, underpinned by the principle of the Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV/AIDS (GIPA).

The recommendations in this briefing document seek to inform a broad range of stakeholders. They can serve, for example, as a tool to inform the review and update of national policies and curricula, as a guide for schools or teachers looking to build a more inclusive and supportive environment for learners, or as an advocacy tool for civil society organisations and youth activists.

The GNP+ Community-Led Accountability, Influence and Monitoring programme (CLAIM) enables people living with HIV to fully claim their space in Global Fund processes and claim their role in ensuring that Global Fund grants are developed, implemented and monitored in ways that are effective and inclusive.

Through CLAIM, we support Community Forums to facilitate communication and coordination among people living with HIV. The main purpose of the Community Forum is to develop a shared advocacy agenda with clear priorities and recommendations that can be used to influence HIV and health-related processes, in particular those connected to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.

This guide was developed by GNP+ to help networks to organise effective Community Forums for people living with HIV, in all their diversity.

The Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+) 2020 Annual Report. The annual report captures the performance and achievements of GNP+ and our partnership in 2020.

Read our impact report here.

A toolkit to:
● Provide a set of practical tools that support community advocates to take concrete steps to turn the data and key findings of PLHIV Stigma Index Reports into practical advocacy actions
● Help networks of people living with HIV to identify and take forward advocacy actions based on the key findings and recommendations from PLHIV Stigma Index
Reports
● Support Stigma Index teams who are at the data analysis stage of the project or who are in the process of developing reports
● Build the capacity of advocates to use data on stigma to make a case for change

UNITAID is an innovative global health initiative that uses its long-term sustainable funding to support projects that positively impact the market for medicines, diagnostics and other health products for HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria.

This handbook describes the mission and vision of the delegation and the Terms of Reference of the different delegation members.

The Global Plan towards the Elimination of New HIV Infections among Children by 2015 and Keeping their Mothers Alive (Global Plan) was launched in July 2011 at the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) High Level Meeting by a Global Task Team, led by UNAIDS and PEPFAR.

This plan covers all low- and middle-income countries, but focuses on the 22 countries with the highest estimates of pregnant women living with HIV. The Global Plan sets out how by 2015 countries can work to ensure that mothers are supported to stay healthy and that children are born without HIV.

The civil society representatives on the GSG for the Plan aim to ensure that a wide range of civil society voices are heard as governments, UN agencies, donors and others work to make the Global Plan a reality. This report brings together the voices and messages heard from an online survey and two face-to-face consulta- tions about the Global Plan. This included:

  • >  An online survey in French and English which garnered approximately 140 responses from more than 40 countries during October 2011;
  • >  A community consultation in the Global Village at the International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA), held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in December 2011 with more than 100 ICASA attend- ees, representing more than 20 countries; and
  • >  A closed, by invitation only, consultation with people living with HIV in the Global Village during ICASA. The consultation was facilitated by two women living with HIV and was attended by approximately 40 women and men living with HIV from at least nine countries.

We are people living with HIV.

Over three decades into this epidemic, we are angry that still 4500 of us are dying of AIDS- related illnesses every day. Sixteen years after developing effective treatment, more than half of all of us who need it cannot access these life-saving drugs. The progress that has been made in treatment access is under threat.

People without access to treatment die!

We are angry that our human rights are increasingly being violated. We are faced with involuntary testing, forced sterilization and being treated as criminals because of our HIV status. Every day we are thrown out of our homes, our schools and our workplaces.

This is an assault on our humanity!

We pay tribute to the women and men who started the people living with HIV movement. Because of them, we are alive today. As people living with HIV, we have achieved so much. It is people living with HIV who have:

  • created harm reduction and safer sex
  • inspired a whole new movement for health care
  • linked health care to human rights
  • brought visibility to LGBT issues
  • broken big pharma’s monopoly on medicine
  • brought back social and economic rights into the global conversation; and
  • stimulated the creation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria.

But we are now facing more barriers to our health and our rights. We face:

  • punitive laws and policies, resulting in a hostile and disabling environment
  • withdrawal of funding and new trade rules and regulations, dramatically reducingour access to drugs and care
  • fragmented and complacent communities, resulting in weakened advocacy.We stand side by side as young activists living with HIV and long-term advocates to tear down these barriers. If we don’t act now new infections will rise; we will never achieve “universal access”, “get to zero” or “end AIDS”.

We are in a state of emergency!

We will have access to the best available prevention, treatment and care for ourselves and our children.
We will enjoy all human rights and freedoms.
We will not stand idle and watch our sisters and brothers die.

We, as a coalition of people living with HIV, unite around the People Living with HIV Global Advocacy Agenda, which was developed by our communities around the world. The Global Advocacy Agenda describes what we all still need to ensure access to prevention, treatment, care and support, to protect our human rights and strengthen all of our communities.

This is a call to reinvigorate and galvanize the movement of people living with HIV in the face of this unprecedented global crisis that affects us all.

We urge all people living with HIV, networks of people living with HIV, and networks of key populations, to commit to join together in solidarity.

The next struggle of the People Living with HIV Movement has begun. For success, we need an even greater and more forceful movement that spans every region and every country with its roots embedded deep in each of our communities.

Please join us!

Available in the Arab, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, Russian and Spanish

A summary report of the HIV Leadership through Accountability final project meeting held in Dakar, Senegal 3-5 June, 2013.

The side event “Post-2015 Development Framework…what’s in it for young people?” was held following the General Assembly 68th Session’s High Level Event on the MDGs and brought together representatives of UN Member States, UN agencies and civil society, as well as key politicians and young people living with and affected by HIV.  The aim was to facilitate an open and frank discussion with young people living with and affected by HIV and representatives of key population groups giving them a voice in the global post-2015 debate and to better understand the challenges they face in accessing comprehensive HIV and sexual and reproductive health services and their needs and hopes for the future.

The event was co-organized by the African Services Committee, the Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS (GYCA), the HIV Young Leaders Fund , Housing Works,  ICASO, International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), International Civil Society Support (ICSS), the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, the International Women’s Health Coalition and STOP AIDS NOW!.

Positive News is the public version of our Annual Report of 2012.

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Also available as PDF download

Option B+ is a prevention of vertical transmission approach for expectant mothers living with HIV in which women are immediately offered treatment for life regardless of their CD4 count. This approach offers advantages such as protection of partner(s) and (unborn) child, as well as benefits to the woman’s health, but also carries with it risks.

In the report GNP+ and ICW present the results of 8 different focus group discussions that discussed these issues in Uganda and Malawi. Below poster summarises the results.

For  additional information on Uganda and Malawi, visit the stigma index website

GNP+ is proud of its achievements and progress over the last few years. To ensure maximum transparency and accountability, GNP+ publishes its Annual Reports after they have been audited and approved by an external auditor.

Why do we keep talking about the responsible and responsive use of language? Language matters

Language matters. It impacts on how we think about ourselves, as individuals within our families and within society. As advocates and activists, we constantly use language as a tool to effect change. People living with HIV have been critical in shaping this language over the last 30 years and still play a central role in ensuring that new discourse in the HIV field does not stigmatize, but rather that it catalyzes empowerment for our community members. In this annotation, we seek to shift the language used in relation to ourselves, our medical condition, our bodies, our identities and the events we face, towards something more life-enhancing, self-affirming and positive in outlook.

Keywords: people living with HIV; women living with HIV; vertical transmission; MTCT; identity; terminology; language

(Published: 11 July 2012)

Citation: Dilmitis S et al. Journal of the International AIDS Society 2012, 15 (Suppl 2):17990

http://www.jiasociety.org/index.php/jias/article/view/17990 | http://dx.doi.org/10.7448/IAS.15.4.17990

 

GNP+ has recently finalised and published two documents which aim to enhance the greater and more meaningful involvement of young people living with HIV within the HIV response. Supported by funding from the HIV Young Leaders Fund ( www.hivyoungleadersfund.org), GNP+ conducted research among 350 young people living with HIV, and among over 175 youth led organisations and networks living with HIV, to identify the key barriers faced by YPLHIV to engaging more meaningfully in the HIV response. The findings from this research led to the development of these two tools:

  • the GIYPA Roadmap: Supporting Young People Living with HIV to be Meaningfully Involved in the HIV Response
  • and GIYPA Guidebook: Supporting Organisations and Networks to Scale Up the Meaningful Involvement of Young People Living with HIV.

GNP+ developed two documents which aim to enhance the greater and more meaningful involvement of young people living with HIV within the HIV response. Supported by funding from the HIV Young Leaders Fund ( www.hivyoungleadersfund.org), GNP+ conducted research among 350 young people living with HIV, and among over 175 youth led organisations and networks living with HIV, to identify the key barriers faced by YPLHIV to engaging more meaningfully in the HIV response. The findings from this research led to the development of these two tools:

  • the GIYPA Roadmap: Supporting Young People Living with HIV to be Meaningfully Involved in the HIV Response
  • and GIYPA Guidebook: Supporting Organisations and Networks to Scale Up the Meaningful Involvement of Young People Living with HIV.

GNP+ at ICASA 2011 held a liaison meeting for focal points from networks of people liivng with HIV involved in the HIV Leadership through accountability programme. The meeting included 18 people of 10 different networks.

Main issues discussed were:

  • Update of programmes in the different countries;
  • Collaboration around LIVING 2012.

 

The National Association of People Living with HIV and AIDS (NAPWA) would also like to thank the Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+) and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) Governance and Transparency Fund (GTF). Their financial and technical support made this study possible.

The mission statements and goals of the participating organisations covered a wide range of activities aimed at addressing the HIV epidemic. These included, improving the lifestyles of people, monitoring and evaluating programmes, providing technical support to health service providers, supporting government, conducting testing campaigns, encouraging home based care and support, developing Integrated Development Programmes (IDPs) and LGBTI services, enhancing delivery and empowering sex workers. Some participants did not provide information about their mission statements.

This report was produced as part of  HIV Leadership through Accountability programme, which ran for five years, from 2009 to 2013

It was spearheaded Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+) and the World AIDS Campaign (WAC), and funded by the Department for International Development (DfID), to create evidence-based campaigning, advocacy and lobbying for and by people living with HIV. Research was carried out to inform and strengthen national, regional and international advocacy, and was implemented with a bottom-up approach, informed by community responses, and strengthened by South-South collaboration.

 The countries where the programme was implemented were: Cameroon, Ethiopia,  Kenya, Malawi, Moldova, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia.

 More information and background materials can be found  at http://www.hivleadership.org/ which is the archive site for the programme

The GIPA Report Card is a means of generating evidence about the application of the GIPA principle in-country based on the views and experiences of people living with HIV. The evidence will contribute to monitoring and evaluating governments’ and organisations’ application of the GIPA principle, particularly in light of the 2001 United Nations General Assembly’s Special Session on HIV and the Declaration of Commitment.

The GIPA Report Card is an advocacy tool, which aims to increase and improve the programmatic, policy and funding actions taken to realise the greater involvement of people living with HIV in a country’s HIV response.

Available in English and French

For more information on the the specifics of the GIPA Report Card or on countries that have applied the GIPA principle, click here

The    “HIV   Leadership    through    Accountability”    Programme    is    funded    by    UKaid    from    the    Department    for    International    Development    (DFID)    Governance    and    Transparency    Fund    (GTF).    It    combines    specific    evidence-gathering    tools,    national    AIDS    campaigns    and    targeted    advocacy    for    good    governance    and    Universal    Access    to    HIV    prevention,    treatment,    care    and    support.

It    contributes    to    the    setting    of    national,    regional    and    global    evidence-based    campaign    agendas    based    on    the    GIPA    principle    through    a    community    driven    process.    It    will    be    implemented    in    fifteen    countries    around    the    world,    and    though    time-limited,    effects    are    anticipated    to    be    long-lasting,    delivering    significant    capacity    building    beyond    the    direct    research    and    advocacy    impact.