(Part 1) Interactive Multi-Stakeholder Hearing for the 2026 High-level Meeting on HIV/AIDS

Good morning.
I call to order the informal interactive multi stakeholder hearing as part of the preparatory process for the 2026 high level meeting of the General Assembly on HIV AIDS.
This meeting is held in accordance with paragraph nine of the resolution 80 stroke 256 of April 27th, 2026, and I warmly welcome you all to this meeting.
This interactive hearing provides all relevant stakeholders with an opportunity to contribute to the ongoing preparations for the high level meeting through interactive panel discussions.
The hearing aims to support member states with the preparatory process, including to inform the negotiations on the declaration of the high level meeting through an interactive dialogue with communities, civil society, and other key stakeholders.
During the panel discussions today, civil society representatives and other stakeholders will have the opportunity to share their views and experiences from their work on the ground.
The hearing also aims to demonstrate the strengths, diversity, and commitment of communities, civil society, and other stakeholders in the response to HIV AIDS epidemic and to propose actions that will make it possible to append intersecting inequalities that are preventing progress in achieving zero new HIV infections, zero AIDS related deaths, and zero discrimination, and ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
I will now make a statement as the president of the General Assembly.
Miss Winnie Byanyima, UN As Director, Executive Director, Excellencies, dear co chair, dear stakeholders, and guests.
Thank you for joining this multi stakeholder interactive hearing in preparation for the high level meeting on HIV AIDS.
Frankly, speaking and we discussed it, the executive director and I, that I was really looking forward to this hearing, not only because we are living in challenging times and it's important to come together, but also because we need positive examples of success of the United Nations and your work as part of the UN family has been for the last four decades, a true success story and we should share that even way more.
It has been a true success story for people affected, but also for the UN and for multilateralism as a whole.
Allow me to go and get straight to the point where we, especially you, many of the stakeholders, but many people at the podium started.
Not since the start of HIV AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, has the progress and the outlook been so promising? Much of that dear friends, is because of you and your colleagues around the world.
I remember very well debates in my own country.
I was still a kid then in the 80s, but with horrible headlines, infused fear and ignorance.
They talked about, and I quote a gay plague about certain deaths, about the need to isolate people, people like us.
It was brave people like you who helped turn the tide on stigmatization.
I still haven't forgotten the huge campaigns in Subway when I was a child, not really understanding but seeing these big posters, calling on people to give aids no chance.
It was one of the most successful public campaigns in my company and retro perspective, educating people proactively on what was then taboo topics around health and also around reproductive rights and bringing it to the mainstream also by the way, for the favor and benefit of women.
The HIV AIDS crisis needed people like you because as I said, it was not a given.
It was brave to do these campaigns.
It needed advocates marching against stigmatization, scientists working to better understand the virus and civil society groups promoting access to prevention and treatment, and it needed the UN as a platform to bring member states together to address the collective challenge that despite the headlines, was never confined to any group or any nation.
Today, HIV is no longer a death sentence, as it was called at the time, but a manageable condition for millions of people.
Scientific breakthroughs, including anteriotb therapy alongside a coordinated global response have reshaped the trajectory of the epidemic.
New HIV infections have been reduced by 61% since their peak in the late 1990s.
More than 31.6 million people are now on lifesaving treatment.
AIDS related deaths have fallen by 70% since their peak in 2004.
And seven countries in Sub Saharan Africa, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesoto, Namibia, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe ones ground zero for AIDS crisis have met the 95-95-95 targets, which call for 95% of all people living with HIV to know their HIV status, 95% of all people who know their status to receive treatment, and 95% of all people treated to have suppressed viral load by 2025.
These results, dear colleagues, are remarkable and deeply commendable.
But as we also know, we are not out of the woods yet.
As with any effort, we must go the last mile together to reach, to educate, and to empower.
Nearly 40 million people continue to live with HIV globally with 1.3 million new infections each year.
Stigma and discrimination against high risk populations still persist with at least 156 countries criminalizing still HIV exposure and 169 countries criminalizing some or all aspects of sex work.
And access to prevention and treatment remains deeply uneven.
While a cure for HIV may not yet be within reach, preventive tools and treatments offer the next best thing, a pathway to halting transmission entirely and ensuring full healthy life for those living with HIV.
In a world where such innovations exist and where resources remain abundant, there's no reason not to take this fight to the next level again together.
The upcoming high level meeting must therefore not only review progress, but reinvigorate the momentum.
We need sustained financing, scaled up access to prevention, and stronger partnership capable of delivering results on the ground.
As stakeholders, your efforts are needed now more than ever to maintain pressure and to help ensure that the decisions taken here reach the communities you serve.
This is particularly vital at a time when overseas development assistance is being cut, when the multilateral system is under strain, and when issues such as HIV AIDS risk falling down the list of global priorities as the world grapples with crisis upon crisis.
I want to be clear because I've heard the chatter, the ongoing UN reform efforts, including the UN AD initiative, will in no way negatively impact these efforts.
Regardless of the future transition of UNAS, the work will and has to continue.
Data will and have to be preserved and efforts will and have to be continue without pause.
These reforms are about delivering effectively and in full reflection of the context today and in full reflection of the positive examples you, especially your agency gave to the whole UN system how to include the maybe special experience from stakeholders and persons affected themselves in the daily work you're doing.
Let us draw inspiration from the Indonesian HIV positive Network, from the international community of women living with HIV in Kenya, from AT up here in the United States and from countless others across every member states who continue to ensure that this issue is neither ignored nor sidelines, but truly becomes a success story for all.
Let us champion a strong political declaration at this high level meeting and I can assure you my full support.
I thank you.
I give the floor now to His Excellency, Charles Masole, permanent representative of Botswana to the United Nations and co facilitator on the preparations for the 2026 high level meeting on HIV AIDS to make a statement and also giving me the opportunity to thank you again, Your Excellency, for taking up this co facilitator role, please.
You have the floor.
Thank you, Madam President.
Excellencies, distinguished delegates, representatives of civil society and other stakeholders, colleagues and friends.
It is a great honor for me to speak at the opening of this important multi stakeholder hearing on behalf of my co facilitator, His Excellency Ambassador David Bakradze of Georgia and myself.
At the outset, I wish to express our deep appreciation to the president of the General Assembly for her leadership.
To the Executive Director of UNH and all civil society representatives and partners joining us today, both here in this room and online.
Today's hearing marks a critical milestone in the preparatory process for the 2026 high level meeting on HIV AIDS.
It is an opportunity not only to take stock of where we stand, but also to listen carefully and humbly to those who have been at the forefront of the HIV response from the very beginning.
Excellencies.
One truth stands out clearly across decades of global HIV response.
Wherever meaningful progress against HIV has been achieved, it has been driven by the advocacy, courage, and persistence of civil society.
Civil society has been indispensable in holding governments accountable, ensuring that the most vulnerable and marginalized communities are reached and advancing rights based people centered approaches that protect dignity and equality.
The leadership of people living with HIV and key populations has not been complimentary to the response.
It has been foundational.
Allow me to briefly reflect on Botswana's old experience.
In my country, organizations such as Botswana Network on ethics, Law, and HIV AIDS, Bella played a pivotal role in shaping the political and legal framework adopted under the leadership of the then President Fas Mahai in the 1990s and Mahi rest internal peace.
This was the time when much of our continent was still in denial about the scale and impact of the epidemic.
Bosona's decision to expand HIV treatment to everyone in the country, including non citizens fundamentally changed our national HIV response and put us on track to ending AIDS.
Our current president, advocate Duma Gideon Boko, has a deep and direct history with Bonlla as the former chair of the board.
Botswana's HIV response often recognized a success story, was not a result of the government action alone.
It was driven and continues to be driven by activists and community leaders who refused to allow the government or society at large to look away from the human cost of AIDS.
This partnership between government leadership and civil society advocates has been and remains essential to sustaining progress not only in Botswana, but also around the world.
And Bosona's experience is not unique.
We see these partnerships between governments, civil society, and communities in many countries in our own region and beyond.
This partnership, this is a partnership that must be sustained to reach the end of AIDS.
Excellencies.
As co facilitators, we approach today's hearing with a clear commitment to listen.
We will listen carefully to the speakers, whether participating in person or virtually, who listen to their experiences, their priorities, and their recommendations.
We will work to ensure that this perspective are meaningfully reflected in the zero draft of the political declaration that we are currently working on.
In doing so, we are committed to ensuring that the leadership role of civil society is fully recognized and that community priorities directly inform the negotiations of the political declaration.
As we celebrate the power of engagement, we also acknowledge the challenges that many of you continue to face.
In too many contexts, civic space is shrinking.
Legal barriers persist.
Funding for community led responses is under threat.
This trends risk undermining the very process or the very progress we have collectively achieved.
We have a shared responsibility to promote and protect enabling environments, environments in which civil society can operate freely, safely and effectively, and in which their contributions are recognized as essential to ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
We also recognize civil society as a cornerstone of accountability.
Community led monitoring, data and advocacy are indispensable in ensuring that that commitments translate into real impact for people's lives.
This is why strengthening community systems and ensuring sustainable support for them must remain a central priority of our collective efforts.
Excellency, colleagues.
Today's hearing is not a procedural step.
It is a vital opportunity to shape a political declaration that is bold inclusive and actionable.
It is an opportunity to ensure that the voices of communities, especially those most affected by HIV, are not only heard, but are also reflected in concrete commitments and measurable outcomes.
As co facilitators, we are fully committed to this goal.
We look forward to an open, constructive, and forward looking discussion today and to working together to deliver a successful high level meeting in June.
I thank you.
I thank the permanent representative of Botswana to the United Nations as a co faciliator as well as also in the name of the co faciliator, His Excellency from Georgia.
I now invite miss Winnie Bana, Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Program on H HIV to make a statement.
Thank you very much.
Your Excellency, President of the General Assembly, miss Annalena Weberg.
Ecell's co facilitators, Ambassador Masoli of Botswana, Ambassador Pakraz of Georgia, Excellency's permanent representatives, distinguished delegates, friends, leaders from civil society and communities, I'm honored to be here with you today.
It's inspiring to see so many of you here in person and more participants online.
Thank you all for joining.
I also want to take opportunity to thank the President of the General Assembly for your leadership on the 2026 United Nations High level meeting on HIV and AIDS and for convening this multi stakeholder hearing.
Excellency, I know that it was not easy to fix the dates in this busy calendar of the UN, but particularly to make this forum truly inclusive by making it a hybrid hearing.
This was not easy without your leadership to negotiate, but yet it is the only way we could make sure that those who either financially or other reason couldn't be here could also participate.
I thank you so much for that.
Thank you, co facilitators, Ambassador Masole and Ambassador Bakhratzi.
You are courageous.
Your governments are courageous to lead on this important issue at a time of tough, tense relationships at the United Nations.
This is a moment of danger.
Today, just as science is placing the end of AIDS within our reach, politics is pulling us backwards.
We now have tools that could dramatically reduce new HIV infections, such as the long acting prevention tools, long acting treatment, scientific breakthroughs that only a decade ago seemed impossible.
They're here now.
However, in 2024 alone, as you heard from the PGA, 1.3 million people acquired HIV globally.
570 adolescent girls and young women were infected every day.
More than 9 million people living with HIV are still not on lifesaving treatment.
Our job is to remind the world that now is not the time to step back.
It is the time to finish what humanity started decades ago with such courage and solidarity.
The political declaration, which is to be agreed at the high level meeting in June, is what will commit governments to shared responsibility and measured progress.
Under your leadership, I know we'll get there.
The participation of communities in this process is fundamental.
The leadership and lived experience of people living with affected by and at risk of HIV.
Keep this response grounded in reality and centered on human dignity.
But we are meeting, as I said, at a profoundly difficult time.
Shifts in the global political context, including pressures on multilaterlism, calls to reconsider the current global health architecture, and the changing development financing landscape have introduced a destabilizing uncertainty to our work.
The global response was built on solidarity and international cooperation.
PEPFAR, the bilateral program of the United States, and the global fund, a multilateral program transformed the epidemic and saved millions of lives.
Today, the aid model on which it is based is seriously under strain.
Global aid fell by over 25% last year, the largest drop ever recorded.
Today, 28 African countries with the highest burden of HIV spend more on debt servicing than on health.
In Sub Saharan Africa until recently, two thirds of HIV funding came from external sources.
But this is where we are now with a dramatic collapse in aid.
Prevention services have collapsed, treatment expansion has stalled and community organizations, the backbone of the response are being forced to shut their doors.
The effects have been immediate and devastating.
Examples, in Uganda, prep uptake fell by 31% in just nine months.
That's between December 2024 and September last year.
Vietnam saw a 21% drop in December 2024 to June, Burundi, 64% decline in the same period.
Even the most basic prevention tools are slieping out of reach in Nigeria.
Condom distribution fell by 55% in only three months from December 2024 to March 2025.
Mozambique, The additional number of people starting anti retroviral therapy coming on treatment in 2025 was 36,000.
In prior years, this number was closer to 130,000.
That's the drop.
Community led services, led by many of you in this room, frontline defenders have been decimated.
In eight countries, we counted 99.9% of the services were paid for from external resources.
When donors pulled out, communities are left with nothing.
Only 0.1% was funded from domestic resources.
For these services provided by communities, we counted in eight countries.
In 2025, we received a report that more than 60% of women led community organizations were forced to suspend essential HIV programs due to the sudden drop in external health assistance.
And we are meeting at a time.
If that was bad enough, it's worse because we are meeting at a time also growing pushback on rights, the bedrock of our success to date.
This pushback is organized and well funded.
It is part of a broader global contest where powerful actors are competing for influence, for markets, for critical minerals and energy and are using proxy conflicts in the developing countries.
In these proxy conflicts, gender equality, sexual reproductive health and rights, LGBTQ rights are being instrumentalized.
Criminalization of key populations is increasing for the first time since UN AIDS started tracking this trend.
Civic space is shrinking through legislation and policies to defund or shut them down.
In Eastern and Southern Africa, new new restrictive bills framed as family values are being debated and organized efforts seek to limit access to HIV and SRHR services.
Sovereignty bills, such as the one recently passed in my country, Uganda further tighten control over civic space.
New or tightening anti LGBTQ laws have been adopted in Mali, in Niger, in Burkina Faso, and most recently Senegal.
Since the bill was enacted on 30th March in Senegal, Senegalese authorities have arrested at least 100 people across the country for what is called acts against nature.
Lawmakers in Ghana have revived an anti LGBTQ bill, undermining decades of progress and pushing people away from services.
At least, this is not just an African issue.
Across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the risks are stark and also immediate.
Kyrgyzstan, police crackdowns and administrative penalties pushed sex workers underground.
Collapsing outreach coverage of sex workers.
In Belarus, civic infrastructure has been dismantled and extremism in courts labels are used to criminalize participation in HIV response, leaving fewer trusted organizations to support people living with HIV.
In Kazakhstan, new restrictions on foreign funding and on LGBTQ information are chilling advocacy and undermining outreach.
We know from the evidence that countries that criminalize have weaker HIV outcomes.
We're receiving alarming reports of rising new infections, rising rates of loss to follow up, and visible signs of reversals.
In some countries, HIV services for key populations are already collapsing.
We see it.
In Kenya, most drop in centers for key populations have closed.
Nigeria has lost at least five clinics.
In Uganda, 45% of programs serving key populations have partially or fully shut down.
Zimbabwe had excellent services for sex workers.
I visited several of them.
These have collapsed entirely in 2025.
77% of harm reduction programs for people who inject drugs report severe disruption.
Last December in Ghana, at the International Conference on AIDS in Africa, it happened in Ghana.
I met young activists and people living with HIV who spoke honestly about how stigma, discrimination, and fear still shape whether people feel safe enough to seek health care or stay on treatment.
What stayed with me was their courage and the reminder that when people fear rejection, criminalization, or violence, they do not come forward for testing.
They do not seek prevention, they disappear from treatment, and HIV spreads fastest where human rights are weakest.
In closing, The AI's response has always been powered by courage, by resilience, by outrage, by refusal to accept the injustice that some lives matter more than others.
That same spirit is needed again now.
This is the moment for the world to embrace the very real possibility.
It is there of ending AIDS as a public health threat.
The science gives us the tools.
We can do this once and for all for people everywhere if we collectively choose to do what is necessary in the next five years.
I wish us a successful multi stakeholder forum leading to an ambitious political declaration at the high level meeting.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I thank the Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV AIDS for your speech, but also for your work.
I now give the floor to miss Florence Rao Annam from the Global Network of People living with HIV GNP plus.
Please, Madam, you have the floor.
Your Excellency, the UN President of the General Assembly, Excellency's, co chairs of the 2026 high level meeting on HIV and AIDS.
Excellency's representatives of member states, UN AIDs leadership, co sponsors, fellow people living with HIV leaders in the room and watching online, communities, civil society, and partners.
It is an honor to address you today on behalf of the global network of people living with HIV GNP plus and the millions of people living with HIV who we represent.
Grounded in the principle of greater involvement of people living with HIV, IPA and through a robust consultative process, GNP plus has developed and shared a united people living with HIV statement on asks, solution statements, and commitments for the upcoming high level meeting.
We urge all member states to engage with this document seriously.
I will share just three asks from that statement today.
First, We ask for guaranteed uninterrupted, affordable and stigma free access to lifesaving HIV treatment for all people living with HIV, regardless of geography, age, gender, identity, or crisis context.
This must include access to innovations such as long acting treatment and continued research toward HIV cure and vaccines so that quality of life becomes a core outcome of treatment.
To achieve sustained viral suppression for all people living with HIV, scale up of high impact differentiated delivery services is important.
Peer adherence support, community testing, community pharmacy models, multi month dispensing, and strong referral pathways between community and health services.
Second, integrate HIV services into primary health care.
The GNP plus report on the people living with HIV minimum requirements for integrated HIV services, informed by over 1,800 respondents clearly outlines our demand for a responsive, person centered HIV services embedded within primary health care.
We have many of our success services and a critical component of universal health coverage framework.
This integration must guarantee coordinated care for HIV, TB, maternal health, non communicable diseases, mental health, and primary care, supported by resilient supply chain systems, adequate human resources, and accessible, affordable services for all.
Third, we ask that we do not lose sight of what EPA principles have been to the HIV movement.
Please embed this as a non negotiable foundation for people living with HIV and those affected by HIV to engage with the HIV response.
It will strengthen and sustain our engagement with our national governments and ensure the country led HIV responses are realistic and sustainable.
In particular, for that already exists at country level, we call for institutionalization and effective transformation of the global fund country coordinating mechanism which already bring together people affected by the three diseases, HIV, TB malaria, our governments partners to jointly design, implement, and monitor responses of the three highly infectious diseases.
Delegates.
The HIV response has succeeded precisely because it placed people living with HIV and those most affected at the center.
At its core, its ambition has been to protect life and secure quality of life for all.
We must not lose sight of this fundamental purpose.
With fewer than four years remaining, we've heard from Madam Winnie, 9 million people living with HIV still lack access to treatment.
Persistent stigma, punitive laws, and environments, deep inequalities continue to undermine adherence, viral suppression, and access across testing, treatment and prevention cascades.
As a direct result, 630,000 people living with HIV, including 75,000 children died in 2024, largely from preventable, treatable AIDS related illnesses.
This is unacceptable.
With the science and tools now available, no one should die of AIDS.
We must confront the devastating reality that these deaths are not abstract.
They are profound failure of our collective promise.
The WHO data reveals that 30% of all people living with HIV in care have advanced HIV disease.
That's AIDS.
17% of them die in hospital admission in 2024 and a further 14 were lost shortly after discharge.
The burden on our children is perhaps the most stinging evidence of our inaction.
While only 52% have access to lifesaving treatment, studies show that in some countries, up to 50% of children under five perish within just six months of their HIV diagnosis.
Many people living with HIV are aging thanks to ART, anti retroviral therapy.
On to die from complications of non communicable diseases.
I know a few people are going to say no, but I am also aging.
I am one of these numbers.
So is everyone we know living with HIV, everyone you individually know.
This is the moment to decide the true weight of your commitment.
Remember these numbers for they speak for us, and they should be the compass that guide your commitment.
The global aid strategy provides clear numerical and anchors for action.
The ambition to put 40 million people on treatment and 20 million accessing biomedical prevention is incredible and powered by two scientific breakthroughs that now stand ready to accelerate progress.
The power of treatment as prevention assures us that a person living with HIV who is virally suppressed cannot pass this virus undetectable equals untransmittable.
This can be supported by long acting unto virals just ahead of us to ensure viral suppression.
Long acting prep, including the recent advancement in linear cpavia can prevent new infection.
The path to HIV epidemic control is now within reach.
Colleagues, last year's disruptions has tested us all.
Yet this period of reform and repositioning offers a genuine opportunity for leadership.
The leadership of today must shape this transition from emergency response to sustainable systems, a necessary and proud evolution that recognizes people living with HIV will be here in 2031 and beyond, with the needs that mattered then as they do now.
Let us carry forward the same admirable spirit of the HIV response, the same energy and resolve that has defined the multilateralism in the HIV response.
We call on governments, policymakers to keep their promise to end AIDS deaths, end stigma, and stop new HIV infections as the clear pathway to HIV epidemic control.
We urge you to honor the commitments enshrined in the right to health and translate political pledges into sustained action and accountability.
Only by fulfilling these obligations can we secure a future that we have all collectively fought for for so many years to keep people alive.
Thank you.
I thank miss Am for Thank you, miss Annam, for your statement.
As indicated in the program, this interactive multi stakeholder hearing also consists of four panel discussions on a closing segment.
The first panel discussion entitled Sustainable measurable and Resilient HIV Responses Financing, Systems Integration and Shared Country and global responsibility to achieve HIV response targets by 2030 will be moderated by Mr.
Michael Ecdaro from the Global Black Gay Men Connect and will take place immediately following this opening segment.
The second panel discussion entitled delivering Equitable people centered and Sigma F Services for all across the HIV prevention, treatment and care continuum will be moderated by miss Aga Erica Castelanos from Global Action for Trans Equality and will take place from 11:45 A.M.
To 1:00 P.M.
Third panel discussion entitled Adré structural inequalities and promoting equity inclusion in the HIV response, including removal of legal barriers and shrinking civic space will be moderated by Eve Mil Suniga from United Global Mental Health and will take place this afternoon from 3:00 to 4:15 P.M.
The fourth panel discussion entitled Community Leadership Accountability and inclusive governance and changing HIV response in the context of reduced funding and increased reliance on community systems to sustain the response will be moderated by miss Gracia Violetta Ross from the World Church Council and will take place from 4:15 to 5:30 P.M.
The closing segment will take place immediately thereafter moderated by His Excellency, David.
Buck Ratzer, permanent representative of Georgia to United Nations and co facilitator on the preparations for the 2026 high level meeting on HIV AIDS.
The opening segment is now concluded, and I invite the moderator and panelists to take their seats on the podium for panel one discussion and I thank all the current speakers.
Thank you and have a good stakeholder meeting.
Let's see.
Can I start.
I started this.
Okay.
Okay.
Hello.
Good morning, everyone.
This is so serious.
I would like to welcome you to the first thematic discussion entitled sustainable, measurable and resilient responses, Financing systems, integration and shared country and global responsibility to achieve HIV response targets by 2030.
Now, my name is Michael Ludaro.
I work for the organization called Global Black Gay My Connect.
I am Nigerian immigrant personally with HIV, but also an American.
This is my second time of leaving the house since I welcome my baby in January.
And so it feels weird to be out of the house.
Also very important because as someone living with HIV, as a gay man, Nigerian who just had a baby, who is just a child, this moment is also significant for me, but also for millions of people around the world who look up to me and also look to have a child as someone living with HIV.
It's quite interesting we're in a different space.
It's really, really crucial for my child to live in a world that is safe and free, but also for myself as well to live in a world that is safe and free for them.
Whatever we do during this HLM but also what we do moving forward will be for my baby and for millions of children around the world who live with HIV, who live with HIV, who are born with HIV as well.
With that being said, I would like to welcome everyone to this panel again Okay.
The discussion we have today will explore what is needed to sustain the HIV response in a changing accountability and ensuring that communities most affected by HIV remain.
With that, I'm truly honored to join by such an incredible group of speakers, and I'm looking forward to the conversation.
But first, we will hear presentations by the panelists.
Each will will have up to 4 minutes for their presentation.
Thereafter, the flog will open for comments, observation, questions.
Those wishing to intervene during interactive discussion are invited to scan the code displayed on the screen.
If you are not able to scan the code, please approach Secretariat colleagues.
You can see them around.
Representative of member states and the UN system observers are invited to press the microphone button on their console.
Participants may indicate they wish to speak starting now.
They will be called upon to speak once the floor is open for their interactive discussion.
After the presentation by the panelists, please note that interventions in the theoic discussion will be limited to minutes, which will be strictly, as you can see, I have this here.
Strictly enforced, so be ready.
My first speaker, my friend, mentor, colleague, someone I love so much, Solange Bautiste is from the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, ITC, and Solange is Executive Director of ITPC Global, a global coalition of HIV treatment activists working in more than 40 countries on health and social justice for all.
Originally from Trinidad and Tobago and based in Johannesburg, she has spent nearly two decades as a leading voice advancing treatment access, medicines, affordability, community led monitoring, and equitable health financing across the global South, ensuring affected communities shape the discussions that affect their lives.
I have prepared a question for Solange that he will have 4 minutes to respond to.
Solange, we are entering this high level meeting moment amid declining donor funding, shifting geopolitical and rising pressure on community systems.
What does an honest conversation about susbility, financing, and equitable access look like in 2026 and what the structural changes and what structural changes are urgently needed if member states are committed to ending aid by 2030.
You have 4 minutes.
Thank you, Michael, Your Excellencies, I will take four Trinidadian minutes, if I may.
President of the General Assembly, co chairs, co facilitators, thank you to the organizers.
I'm really glad that we're opening this hearing with financing and the sustainability of the community response.
Usually these get pushed to the very end, yet they are critical factors that will determine whether we will end AIDS by 2030.
Too often conversations about financing and sustainability are treated as conversations for governments, economists, and institutions alone, as though communities are merely recipients of some decision made somewhere else.
But communities also have a right to shape how resources are mobilized, prioritized, and allocated because communities are the ones living with the consequences when prevention disappears, when clinics close, when outreach workers vanish, and when treatment systems fail.
So when we talk about domestic resource mobilization and country ownership, the real question is ownership by whom? Who is sitting at the table when financing priorities are decided? Gosh, I think we've been saying involve communities meaningfully for over 20 years now and saying it again will not change anything.
So I'm asking member states directly, where are the budget lines that cannot be cut without community sign off? Where are the governance seats with voting power, not just observer status? Where are the financing rules that make community participation a condition of disbursement and not a footnote? Meanwhile, the proof is already in the field.
Community led monitoring is one of the most cost effective tools we have to keep systems impact driven, equitable, and people centered as funding tightens.
It surfaces chock outs before they become crises.
It protects people most likely to be left behind.
Communities are not a line item.
Communities are infrastructure.
Communities deliver the highest return on every dollar invested in this response.
But this can only happen when resources actually reach them.
That brings us to the harder question, where do those resources come from? Yes, countries need to increase domestic resources, but development justice requires honesty.
Can we be honest for a moment? Many cannot deliver what they're being asked to sustain when debt stress, austerity frameworks, restrictive trade agreements, and technology monopolies actively shrink the fiscal space.
Real sustainability means creating the conditions for countries to invest in their own people.
That requires addressing debt, challenging austerity, fixing trade rules, and investing in technology transfer and local and regional manufacturing.
And yet we see a troubling pattern.
At the same time, the world calls for resilience and country ownership, we continue to resist meaningful technology sharing and equitable production.
Current negotiations, including those linked to pandemic preparedness and benefit sharing, are revealing whose interests the global health architecture actually protects.
We cannot continue asking countries in the global South to carry greater responsibility while actively limiting their ability to produce, access, or govern their tools needed to protect their own populations.
That is not partnership, that is managed dependency dressed up in the language of equity.
Which brings me to access.
We have long acting technologies that could transform HIV prevention and treatment and for shorter safer TB treatment regimens that could finally end the leading cause of death for people living with HIV.
But a breakthrough that only reaches wealthy countries is not a global health success.
Affordability is not a technical issue, it is a political choice.
Governments at this high level meeting must choose to use trips flexibilities, support regional manufacturing, oppose trips plus measures, and demand transparency in pricing and R&D.
What is missing is the political will to treat access as a shared global responsibility rather than a market outcome.
This requires real structural change, not consultation, not gradual shifts, real redistribution of resources, technology, and decision making power.
And here is where we forget communities are not some recent invention.
Governments came out of communities, institutions came out of communities, economies came out of communities.
We are not asking the global system for something new.
We are asking it to return to first principles with communities at the center where they always work.
I thank you.
I was told you're not supposed to clap, but I'm just going to clap.
Thank you Solange.
Now I now introduce our second speaker who is joining us online, doctor Vuseca De Bola, my other sister, from the Global Fund.
She's the head of Community rights and Gender Department at the Global Fund.
Vuseca heads the Community rights and Gender Department at the Global Fund to fight Aids Tubercul and malaria.
She is an expert I will start that again.
She is an expert in community led advocacy, gender transformative programming, anti racism, and global health accountability with a PhD in development studies and a record of award winning leadership in HIV justice.
Let me confirm voice with us.
Yes, I'm here, Michael.
The question for you with funding cuts accelerating, geopolitical tensions rising and scale of need outpacing the current global fund pledges in 2025, what concrete mechanism must be put in place now to ensure the transition towards domestic financing does not become a death sentence for communities most dependent on the global fund? Good morning, everyone to those who are in New York.
Thank you, Michael, for the question.
It's very hard to follow after Solange.
I think she has already outlined some of the conditions that would make it possible domestic financing to not become a death sentence, especially if we're transitioning to that context.
But I wanted to start first by saying, many of us have emphasized this morning that the progress that we have made so far was not by accident.
It was through sustained commitment right at the bottom of the ladder in communities that communities demanded that the who world needs to put a spotlight on diseases, particularly HIV, killing ordinary people like me.
So millions today, including myself and many others who have said this morning that we are alive because of that commitment, we are alive because of that investment.
That is our legacy and it's a legacy deserving to be maintained, worth fighting for, especially at the time when it is about to fade.
We are at a crossroads, Michael, because significant cuts have really severely disrupted lifesaving HIV programs in countries and those geopolitical tensions even today continue to pose serious challenges even in the services that are maintained.
Barely surviving communities who are barely able to do their work.
At the same time, rising debt burdens in the same countries which we are transitioning or accelerating transition to.
That, together with the increasing pushback on human rights and gender equality and shrinking civic space creates a very convoluted crisis that requires a sustained commitment, but very organized, very funded pushback to push back against that pushback.
So the question then before us is not simply whether we have resources to finish this fight, it is whether we have the resolve to finish this fight.
If we fail to act decisively now, we risk reversing every gain that we have made that we have achieved, which many generations wanted to achieve, and we've made it possible in my lifetime, that you can fight for something, you can achieve it, and you can benefit from it instead of you working and organizing and fighting a social injustice that only benefits generations far away from the people who fought for it.
So in my submission in this hearing, I only have four simple asks that we must protect people.
For governments who are present today here and us, we must protect people within a context that we all know is very difficult.
There is limited funding.
The governments don't have adequate resources.
Whatever we have to do, we have to protect people.
We must strengthen systems, we must secure sustainable financing.
We must also scale up innovation.
If I want Michael, I can just spend a little bit of time on each of those four asks.
The greatest risks today that we face are the highest structural barriers that are faced by populations confronted by stigma, discrimination, criminalization, and violence.
Those are the communities that we must protect.
Children still acquire HIV very early in their lives from mothers who do not have basic HIV prevention services, while we have the luxury of modern day science.
We have the best tools available at our disposal, yet children are still acquiring HIV.
Young women are still navigating contexts of sexual violence that makes them disproportionately vulnerable.
In 2026.
When these communities cannot access services that they need, the epidemic does not retreat, it does not wait for us, it advances.
Getting back on track means we need to have targeted, safe, accessible, stigma free evidence based prevention services that are designed around the lived realities of people, not bureaucratic conveniences designed outside of those context without those people at the center, without those communities at the center.
This means recognizing that community led responses are not an add on or a supplement to the HIV response, they are the people.
Investing in community systems and increasing funding for grassroots actors is how we ensure programs are trusted, relevant, and genuinely impactful because they are designed by and for the communities that it needs to serve.
The second one is strengthening systems, it requires us to be people centered.
We are in the context of accelerated integration of services, particularly embedding HIV services within the primary health care systems.
If integration is not people centered, it may cause harm for some communities.
Community platforms are also important as a pathway for continued access to services for some populations whom integration as a journey is not ready.
People centered approaches also deliver better outcomes when you are thinking about it in broad terms.
Integration is not just a clinic in one central area.
It is a pathway of many, many platforms of care that still make sure that everybody has access to services at your primary health level.
But when integration only works, when it's only designed for people without people, where people are not meaningfully engaged, when community systems are disempowered or not funded or maintained to continue to offer trusted access services, when integration may cause harm, we will not reach the end of aids.
Three, we must also secure sustainable financing, as we know, Yes, the need for country leadership is increasing.
The pressure for domestic investment is increasing.
And the transition to greater self reliance is necessary.
It must be managed.
It is a pathway.
It should not be imposed as a hasty shift.
It will not move.
It will risk catastrophic.
Could you help us wrap up, please.
Wrapping up.
Yes.
Yes, many people have spoken about long acting prevention tools like La Kapo as a potential.
The potential remains a potential without access.
Without deliberate prioritization of access to those who are most at risk in the Global South, we are going to be making innovation that only sits on the shelves and run itself to expiring.
For me, I think the time is now for us to act and that act must be intersectional because we are facing multiple layers of crisis.
Thank you.
Thank you for your leadership, Vu, and for the leadership of the Global Fund.
Now move to our next panelist, Mr.
Sprin Kumba, who is from the network of young people living with HIV in Tanzania.
Ciprin is a young Tanzanian person openly and proudly living with HIV, committed to advancing the rights and health and well being of people HIV.
He currently works with a network of young people living with HIV and AIDS in Tanzania, supporting youth led advocacy and community engagement in HIV responses.
Ciprin is also a young researcher, passionate about meaningful youth and participation, accountability, and sustainable health systems.
Amazing, Ciprin.
Ciprin, I have a question for you.
I hope you're online, you can hear me.
Yes, I can hear you.
Great.
Why does the global health HIV response continue to celebrate youth leadership rhetorically, while structurally under investing in youth systems and responses for children and adolescents most affected by HIV? What risk does this pose for achieving the 2030 target and what would meaningful long term investment and sustainability actually look like in practice? You have 4 minutes.
Thank you so much, Michael, for that good question.
But let me start by riding on the protocol that we already observed in the room for the interest of the time and directed to answer your question.
It will be for me, the reason why the global HIV response continue to celebrate the youth leadership in rhetoric while still under investing in our systems is only because the world leaders and the world in general is now very comfortable listening to us rather than really investing in us, but also trusting us with power, resources, and long term investment.
Like most of the times we are being invited to be part of the discussion in our conferences, in our meetings where we can speak on a panel like today, but also our stories can be used in our reports and the different campaigns.
But when it comes to those discussions on budgeting, funding priorities, decisions this way as young people, but also community in general, where we are pushed aside and all of our interventions seems to be like not essential.
They are something optional.
This is why we are still lagging behind in making sure that at least we are moving together with young people.
And I'm speaking this not only as an advocate, but I'm speaking this as a young person living with HIV in the statistic for 40 million of people living with HIV globally, and we experienced over 60 years since when I was an adolescent ing a different platform at the national level to the international level, trying to amplify the voices of young people to say that this is what we want.
But yet in my own calculations, what we have said and what we have requested, it has not implemented over 50%.
That's the reason why we're still lagging behind today.
Let me put this clear for all of us to understand in the room.
For us people living with HIV, particularly young people, we are not a subgroup within this movement.
We are the political engine and moral compass of the HIV response.
That's the reason why we keep on emphasizing that the 2026 political declarations on HIV AIDS should keep its promise of making sure that it's putting us people living with HIV at the center of the HIV response and being the leader in the movement.
Let me give leaders in the room a quick example of what I have encountered a few weeks ago.
I visited one of the facility in my places and when I was just talking to the young people around there who were younger than I, who are also living seeing uncertainties, not being sure of what will come next.
They come up with different recommendation and when we were talking, someone said to me, something that stay with me and I will not forget it.
He said, you know, for me now, I'm not scared of the HIV anymore, but what scares me most is not knowing whether the system that supported me, the system that helped me to survive today will exist tomorrow for me and for other people like me.
This is what we are facing and this is what we are really seeing.
That's the reason why the conversation have a conversation about sustainability, it is very important and it really matters for us right now.
We have started seeing that now most of the community intervention, most of the youth led intervention are now being pulled aside with what the word is calling it lifesaving interventions.
This community intervention, which helped people to adhere to medication, stay on medication, become virus suppressed are now being seen as an important pillar of life savings.
Let's pause readers in the room and ask ourselves these quick questions that everyone should reflect maybe that questions from your own or from where you are right now.
Who has that right to define what is so called life saving? Is it donors with a check on hand? Is it government officials? Is it leaders, or is it people being saved themselves? I think for me, we were supposed to define what is that lifeless saving.
This is not an attack by medical interventions because we do understand most of the times when people are referring to lifesaving interventions, they'll only talk about by medical intervention, leaving out other important pillars like the community, the peer support, the psychosocial support, and the mental.
Let me put it this way for the leaders in the room to understand the way that feels and the community I'm trying to present the feel outside.
For us, safe space is lifesaving.
For us, peer support is lifesaving.
For us, psychosocial support is lifesaving.
Please lead us in the loop.
We cannot afford to lose all of this.
That has proven evidence for over decades and have supported us to be here to date.
We built this resiliency over time with a trust.
Before we were not able to just go to test for HIV, we fear to stay on medication to prevent.
Can you wrap up, please? Yeah.
But I'll just go directly to the ask that I'm trying to put for the people living with HIV and the young people in general.
First and foremost, I would request the leaders in the room to make sure that we move from symbolic youth engagement to institutionalized uses, but also looking at sustainability as a social contracting is something very key, but making sure that we come up with a legal framework to say that the social contracting must be this way when the countries are making budget in their countries, to say that this percent will go for the social contracting and that money really gets community led organization really gets to youth organization to sustain HIV response.
Just wrap up, I would love to put the leaders in the room to tell you that, please leaders in the room and everyone listening in the room investing as risk work with us so that when we develop that Adré into run, you will also be aligning with us.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
A, if I could, I will allow you to speak on and on because you agree very, very important points.
So thank you so much.
Our next speaker is miss Tatiana Dashko from the Alliance for Public Health in Ukraine.
Tatiana is International Program Director at the Alliance for Public Health in Ukraine, one of the largest HIV prevention, harm reduction and treatment implements in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
She focuses on HIV programming management, harm reduction, prep scale up, gender responsive services, and sustaining care for conflict affected and humanitarian settings.
Tatiana, are you with us? Yes.
Perfect.
Distinguish panelists.
Let me pose your question.
Can you hear me? Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Great.
Yes.
Yes, I can hear you.
Thank you.
All right.
Tetiana, what should the global HIV response learn from conflict setting like Ukraine about what actually HIV sustaining systems are to sustain HIV systems during crisis and how our current global financing and preparedness models truly, designed for realities the world now faces? What lessons should government take from community led responses that have maintained and actually saved lives during war in Ukraine? Thank you, Chair, dear panelists, colleagues, friends, greetings from Kyiv that was hit by 675 Russian drones tonight with already seven confirmed casualties.
I'm standing beside a mobile clinic that regularly delivers HIV, TB, and basic health services just 5 kilometers from the front line because no one else does.
This clinic, like dozen others, is operated by a civil society organization, Alliance for Public Health, originally providing HIV services only.
During war, community organizations became the backbone of HIV and tuberculosis responses.
This is the first lesson from Ukraine.
When systems collapse, communities sustained care.
The second lesson is that crisis require integrated and people centered responses.
During war, people do not come only with HIV.
They come with trauma, they come with mental health needs, substance dependence, poverty, displacement, low threshold mobile services, integrated HIV hepatitis and TB care.
Digital navigation become essential to pandemic control.
The third lesson is innovation.
Innovation is not a luxury.
Innovation is survival, long acting prevention and treatment, including Ana capir, long acting depo buprenorphine can transform continuity of care during displacement and instability.
Digital tools, portable diagnostics, AI, power TB screening, telemedicine are already changing what is possible in crisis settings.
Yet many of these interventions are unavailable across my region, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
My region is the only in the world where both HIV incidence and AIDS related mortality continues to rise.
TB, including drug resistant TB is a major threat and the reasons are well known, criminalization of key populations, shrinking civic space, underfunding of evidence based prevention and failure to prioritize people most at risk, people who use drugs, sex workers, men having sex, transgender people, migrants and prisoners.
In the time of transition to domestic resources, we must preserve the critical role of communities and civil society in ECA and elsewhere by providing sufficient funds.
Transition from donor funding must not mean fully funding governments only, rather, using the transition funds to strengthen national community systems as a part of sustainable national response.
Staff and doctors in our mobile clinics wear bulletproof vests and helmets.
This is protection and a symbol of commitment to continue serving our communities under any circumstances.
Today, I ask the global community to show the same courage.
Thank you.
Thank you to all for amazing speakers.
I now open the floor for comments and questions.
Just before you go ahead, once I give the floor to a participant, please press the microphone button at that point.
The green light on the microphone will guide the technician to activate your microphone.
Once your microphone is activated, you may proceed to make your intervention.
Also, in order to allow Massman participation, I request to please limit your interventions to 2 minutes.
Once the red lights on your microphone starts blinking, it means time's up.
Wrap up.
You will see QR code on the doors and please scan those also for your intervention.
We have a number of folks already here.
Also, we'll go to our first person who's going to intervene, Monolab it's different here.
Mona Bolani, India HIV and AIDS Alliance, and she's online.
You have 2 minutes.
Hello.
Okay.
Good morning to all.
My Mona Bolani from India Aids Alliance, and I'm representing India HIVADS Alliance.
India HiIidS Alliance is working for all communities like people living with HIV and LGBTQ since five years in India.
We are also partnering with the Health India Alliance and our experience for HIV care is that very clear that academy is no longer just biomedical challenges.
Now it is a system and community challenge.
Civil society is not just a service provider.
We are the co creator of the accountability, equality, and responsive systems.
So for the sustainability, our statement is now the biggest challenge is not just for the scaling up the services, but the sustaining to them.
We must move to move from the donor depending funding to the country owned and blended financing.
Integrating HIV into the national health budgets, social protection, and insurance schemes.
The second thing in our statement is system strengthening and system integrating.
Vertical HIV program must evolve into the integrated health system and linking with HIV, TV, and other non communicable disease at the primary health care setting level.
Integration reduces stigma, improve access, and strengthen the resilience.
Digital platform also provides to help and address the grievance redressal system and it can also enhance further ensure services, people centered and accountable.
For the measurability, we must shift from the impost to the real outcomes.
We need to see communities with the viral suppression, retention in the care, reducing new infection, and mortidity.
It requires a strong and desggreated data system and real time dashboard and community led monitoring for the database drive decisions.
It's not datas are not for only just reporting.
Community resilience also sorry, resilience also Please wrap up, please.
Yeah.
Yes.
I stated that COVID pandemic learned us like our system must be with stand with SOCs, but we need to decentralize the services as multi month dispensing, strong local infrastructure, and supported our workforce with the community trust and engagement.
In my last statement, which is the shared responsibility.
Communities must lead with the policy ownership, domestic financing, and accountability.
Global partners must continue.
Thank you so much for sharing.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
We'll now go to Member State EU.
Thank you, Chair.
I have the honor to deliver this statement on behalf of the European Union and its member states.
We would like to thank the organizers for this timely hearing and for the essential contributions of all stakeholders.
It's a real privilege as we prepare for the 2026 high level meeting on HIV AIDS.
We remain steadfast in our commitment to ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
UN members must scale up efforts to meet international national targets, contributing to the 2030 agenda and the priorities of the global AIDS strategy 2026 2031.
The 2026 Political Declaration must be action oriented, measurable, and grounded in human rights and gender equality with an emphasis on sexual and reproductive health and rights in accordance with the Beijing platform for action and the program of action of the ICPD and the outcomes of their review conferences.
It must also build on past commitments, including the 2021 Political Declaration, while addressing persistent gaps and barriers in prevention, testing, and care.
The EU calls for three urgent priorities in the Declaration.
First, reaffirming our joint political commitment to multilateralism and ending AIDS by 2030.
This requires accelerated human rights based action, particularly for key populations and broader communities while keeping HIV AIDS high on global agendas.
Success depends on cooperation of all actors.
Second, accelerating prevention, testing, and treatment through innovation and sustainable financing.
Equitable access to HIV prep and integrated HIV services, including in humanitarian settings are essential.
The Declaration should promote innovation, voluntary technology transfer on mutually agreed terms, and resource mapping to boost domestic financing and health sovereignty.
Third, combating inequalities, stigma and discrimination by strengthening community led responses.
National strategies must embed communities and civil society and service delivery, ensuring sustainable funding for person centered care.
Punitive and discriminatory laws must be removed, stigma tackled, and universal access to SRR, including evidence based comprehensive sexuality education guaranteed.
Colleagues, the 2030 deadline is approaching.
The 2026 Declaration must commit to accelerated inclusive action rooted in science, human rights and accountability.
The EU remains dedicated to multilateral cooperation to end aids, ensuring no one is left behind.
We will engage constructively in negotiations and stand ready to collaborate with all stakeholders.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Our next intervention is coming from CSOs Morin Laborators from IPPF.
Apologies if I misplaced your name, but please go ahead.
You have 2 minutes.
Push the mic and raise your hand.
Push the mic and you can raise your hand if you're in the room.
Okay.
Please go ahead.
Can you hear me? Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Sir.
I speak on behalf of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the world's largest provider of sexual and repive health services, providing HIV services to our member associations and partners in over 150 countries.
From what we see on the ground, one message it's clear the HIV response is under pressure.
For many countries in the global South, HIV systems still depend on international funding.
When donary priorities shift, treatment and access to SRR and HIV services become at risk.
This is happening in a context where multilateralism is being questioned, where new HIV infections are rising as funding shifts toward military expenses and where human rights, including women and LGBTQ rights, gender equality and SIR are more and more contested.
Sustainability cannot mean do more with less.
It must be locally led system with key population and communities at the center of decision making.
It must also mean gender responsive budgeting.
We need shared but differentiated responsibilities.
We also need to recognize that domestic resource mobilization alone will not close the gap.
We need global solidarity, including through mechanisms such as the global fund and the initiative.
We also need debt relief, stronger self coversion, technology transfer, and equitable access to medicines.
Finally, financing must reach key populations and communities who remain at the front of the HIV response, but which organizations remain too often underfunded.
Finally, we call on member states to reaffirm and implement previous declarations and to build on the most advanced agreed language and where possible, go further for this year's political declaration.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for staying with the time.
And now we go to Civil Society, miss Rhoda Iguaa from Eg PAT.
She's joining virtually.
Please go ahead.
Thank you, Michael.
My name is Rhoda Iguta from the Elizabeth Glazer Pediatric Aids Foundation.
I want to speak directly about children because in HIV financing conversations, they are the ones that are falling through the cracks.
Allow me to thank the panelists that have already spoken so strongly on behalf of children.
The data is alarming.
2024-2025, HIV testing among children dropped by 34%.
50,000 fewer infants received early diagnostic testing.
54,000 fewer children are on treatment today than a year ago.
This is not a pediatric HIV response problem.
We know what works.
This is a financing and prioritization problem.
When budgets are cut and systems are stretched, children suffer fast because they cannot walk into a clinic alone.
They depend on caregivers and on supply chains that deliver testing kits and pediatric formulations on time.
They depend on outreach workers who ensure that mom and baby pairs remain connected in the health system.
When those systems weaken, children disappear from care.
But here's what we also know that platforms that prevent vertical transmission of HIV also deliver for syphilis and hepatitis B.
Integration is not just smart policy.
It is the most cost effective path to reaching women and children consistently.
Therefore, as member states look toward the 2026 high level meeting on HIV, APAF has the following three asks.
Number one, protect and sustain financing for pediatric HIV services.
Number two, invest in integrated maternal, newborn and child health platforms because that is where the efficiency gains are.
Number three, set explicit measurable pediatric HIV targets so that children are central, not peripheral to the next phase of the HIV response.
A AIDS free generation is possible, but only if we fund for it.
I thank you.
Then we're going to Society Katherine Kirk from HRI.
Streaming online.
Please go ahead.
Michael.
I'm speaking on behalf of Home Reduction International.
8% of all new HIV infections globally are among people who inject drugs.
HIV prevalence among people who inject drugs is ten times higher than in the general population.
Despite this disproportionate burden, harm reduction services are being weakened.
Instead of scaling up this effective and cost effective response, we're watching harm reduction systems collapse.
Even before the cuts in 2025, funding for harm reduction in lower and middle income countries stood at just $151 million, barely 6% of what is needed.
Harm reduction must be recognized as an essential part of the HIV response in the new political Declaration.
Sustainable HIV response cannot exclude key populations, particularly in contexts where adequate policies and enabling political conditions are lacking.
Where drug use, sex work, or same sex relations are criminalized, national systems are less likely to fund the peer led organizations best placed to reach those most affected.
Without adequate mechanisms for meaningful community participation in decision making, key populations will be left behind in any rush for shifts to domestic financing.
The declaration must therefore commit to ensure explicit protections, reinforced fenced funding, and explicitly name key populations, including people who use drugs.
Communities must continue to be central to the HIV response.
Community led services are often the only trusted entry point for people who use drugs to access HIV prevention and treatment.
They've been hardest hit by the recent funding cuts and their sustainability is under threat.
Cuts to wider health services, legal aid, social support, and human rights advocacy are compounding this loss.
The Political Declaration should commit to ensure direct, flexible long term financing for community led and civil society organizations, including through social contracting.
And finally, it must enshrine community leadership in governance, monitoring, and accountability at all levels of the HIV response.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
And now give the floor to Member State Colombia.
Thank you, Mr.
President Colombia.
Welcome to the convening of this panel at a time when we are facing significant challenges steming from the reduction of international financing and persistent inequalities in access to health services.
Based on evidence, we see that advancing toward the 2030 targets requires strengthening national leadership, integrating the HIV response into public health systems and ensuring that communities remain at the center of public policies.
In this regard, let me talk about our experience in Colombia.
Our culture has progressively transitioned from a model primarily supported by international cooperation toward a framework of greater national ownership and domestic financing.
The explicit inclusion of oral pre exposure prophylaxis within the national health benefit plans constitutes a structural step toward ensuring progressive coverage, continuity of care, and equitable access within the health system.
We particularly recognize the support of different partners such as PAH, the Global Fund, and technical and scientific partners that supported the initial phases of implementation and Nation to achieve this national plan.
Plan has a combination of prevention services articulating prevention, diagnosis, treatment, clinical follow up, laboratory services, counseling, and community participation.
This approach strengthens the resilience of the health system and reduces service fragmentation.
It also prioritizes populations historically and disproportionately affected by HIV, including men who have sex with men, transgender persons, sex workers, people who use drugs, and migrant populations under the principle of leaving no one behind.
Colombia reaffirms that achieving the 2030 target requires comprehensive responses grounded in human rights, robust public health systems, community leadership, and effective international cooperation.
Cob believes that sustainable responses must also be measurable.
For this reason, community and prevention actions are integrated into our national information systems that enable traceibility, monitoring, and accountability, strengthening evidence based decision making to advance toward the 95 95 targets.
In a context of shrinking global financing, we call for renewed political and financial commitment to HIV response, ensuring that the progress achieved is not reversed and that people and marginalized populations remain at the center of our collective efforts.
I thank you, sir.
Thank you, Excellency.
Now, apologies.
We cannot take any longer interventions on the floor because of time.
I would love for all of our panelists to give a 1 minute intervention.
I know you have 2 minutes before, but now because we run out of time, so you have 1 minute each for your closing intervention.
So I will start with Slan.
Thank you very much, Michael.
It's a bit difficult to try to summarize based on what everyone has just said, but I think the most important thing that is a through line in this point is that communities have a role even in the financing discussions.
I think that is something that we often forget, and I think I want to make sure that we understand that communities are experts, they are not there as mere recipients of services and they have a lot of expertise to bring to the table.
And we cannot only rely on domestic resource mobilization in the current context of the geopolitical situation that we are in.
It is really important to address issues of debt and taxation, to make sure that fiscal space is made for the response that we need to sustain the gains that we are desperately trying to protect.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Actually, we have to go back to the floor to a member of parliament from Azerbijan.
Please, 1 minute.
Online.
Yeah.
Thank you, Chair, ladies and gentlemen.
We are at an important crossroads for the global HIV response, a moment of serious risk, but also real opportunity.
The decisions made at this meeting will shape national planning and implementation for years to come.
At the same time, we must recognize that healthy and sustainable cities are central to the future of public health.
My country, Azerbijan strongly believes that inclusive urban development and accessible healthcare must go hand in hand.
Azerbijan is actively promoting sustainable and people centered urban policies, including support for fast track cities initiatives that expand access to HIV services.
Parliaments have a unique role in translating political declarations into real action through legislation, budget, and accountability mechanisms, the global TB Caucus, and the global parliamentary platform.
HIV AIDS are here not only to advocate for these commitments, but also to help ensure that they are implemented effectively.
Tuberculosis remains the leading killer of people living with HIV in a time of tightening resources, we simply cannot afford the inefficiency of treating these two diseases as a separate issues.
Integration is not only the right approach, it is the smart and sustainable one.
I thank you.
Thank you so much.
To other panelists, you don't have to intervene, but you're welcome to.
You have 1 minute.
I will go to Vseker Michael, I'll be very quick.
Just to remind member states that as the ending of AIDS is within our reach, but it requires really concerted effort towards international solidarity.
It is also our responsibility to protect the gains that we all have achieved in the last decades and therefore, we also want to make sure that this promise is fully realized, both financially and otherwise, but focusing on key vulnerable populations whom without our solidarity, they will perish.
Thank you.
Tatiana, you don't have to, but you have the floor.
Thank you.
We don't need another declaration.
We need action like World United to support Ukraine.
We need a coalition of the willing care in aids or rather coalition of the acting countries which are prepared to fully fund evidence based HIV responses, protect human rights, scale innovation, and end aid by 2030 for good.
We need an action plan and we need a group of leaders and I'm sure the countries are in the room.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
And last, pron, you don't have to you.
Thank you so much, Michael.
For me, it would be the same like my plans that they have said.
We already know what works.
The real question is not whether the word is finally ready to invest in us, but we need investment, not in words.
We need budget, we need systems, we need a trust.
We need long term sustainability strong enough to truly again insist to truly end AIDS by 2030.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you to all my panelists.
I think this has been a very, very interesting conversation and a great opener for the hearing.
Thank you, Solange, Vu, Cypri, Tatiana, as well and everyone else.
I think one thing that we've made super clear in this conversation is, this is not the same HLM we've had before.
As communities, we are actually here not just activist calls, we are here with solutions.
We came with solutions.
I'm glad that EU mentioned key populations.
Actually, we are here with what you can do to ensure that we call the tides and also respond to what's happening.
To every member states, we come with solutions.
We came here with solutions, we have actions, and we're not just here fighting for inclusion in language, we are fighting for solutions and policy changes.
Thank you, everyone.
I really appreciate you all.
I would like now to invite the panelists for panel discussion two to take their seat at the podium.
And Erica, you are the moderator.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you very much for the previous panel.
We shall continue with the informal interactive multi stakeholder hearing in preparations for the 2026 high level meeting on HIV AIDS.
Panel discussion two is entitled Delivering Equitable People centered and Stigma Free Services for all across the HIV prevention treatment and care continuum.
Good morning to everyone.
My name is Erica Castellanos from Gate, Global Action for Trans equality, and I will be your moderator for panel two.
I am a proud Belgian Born Vision, a woman living with HIV for 30 years and happily being embraced by the Netherlands, my new country.
Also, breaking protocol, cheering for my family and children who are watching me in new NTV.
Love you.
So all across the HIV prevention, treatment and care continuum as we'll be discussing in this panel, we will be looking at closing gaps in access to HIV services, particularly for populations being left behind due to legal barriers, stigma and discrimination.
We will explore how to scale up combination prevention by strengthening demand, community system strengthening service uptake, alongside equitable access to accurate information, quality service delivery for all people living with HIV.
This panel will also discuss how HIV interventions must be integrated with other public health and development agendas and systems, including for sexual and reproductive health, tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, non communicable diseases, mental health, and social protection.
We will start with presentation by the panelists.
Each panelist will have up to 4 minutes.
For their presentations.
Thereafter, the floor will be open for comments, observations, and questions.
Those wishing to intervene during the interactive discussion are invited to scan the QR code displayed on the screen.
If you are not able to scan the code, please approach the Secretariat colleagues.
Representatives of member states, UN systems, and observers are invited to press the microphone button on their console.
Participants may indicate their wish to speak starting now.
They will be called upon to speak once the floor is open for the interactive discussion after the presentations by the panelists.
Please note that interventions in the thematic discussion will be limited to 2 minutes, which will be strictly enforced.
I now give the floor to our first speaker.
My sister, miss Yvette Rafael, who leads advocacy for Prevention of HIV and AIDS AFA from South Africa.
Yvette Rafael is co founder and executive Director of AFA, living openly with HIV since 2000.
She works on HIV prevention advocacy, community mobilization, research literacy, gender based violence, and rights based HIV workplace policy.
Yvette, how do we deliver centered and stigma free HIV prevention treatment and care across the full continuum for everyone everywhere.
Help us solve the million dollar question.
You have 4 minutes.
Thank you so much, Erica, my sister.
President of the General Assembly, Excellency, distinguished guests, colleagues, comrades, and friends.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak about how we deliver equitable, people centered and stigma free HIV prevention treatment and care across the full continuum for everyone everywhere.
I think the only way we can do that is by using a feminist lens.
Just come with me.
We know what drives progress, science, sustained financing, and strong systems.
But we also know what slows it down.
It's punitive laws, stigma and discrimination, violence.
These are not side issues.
They determine how we can access services safely, who is believed, and who is protected, and who is left behind.
If we are serious about ending AIDS as a public health threat, then we must then representation is not optional.
It is a requirement for effective policy.
That means centering women living with HIV and ensuring meaningful leadership and decision making power for key populations, including sex workers, gay and bisexual men, people who use drugs, people in prisons, and for queer and transgender people whose lives and health outcomes are too often shaped by exclusion rather than evidence.
We must close gaps in access to services by removing legal and structural barriers and by investing in approaches that people trust, confidential, non judgmental, culturally competent care, community led services, and protection from discrimination in health settings, schools, workplaces, and within families and communities.
This is how we scale up prevention.
We strengthen demand by ensuring people have accurate information and real choices.
We strengthen community systems, so outreach peer navigation, harm reduction and differentiated service delivery can reach people early and keep reaching them over time.
And we improve service uptake when services are designed around people's lives.
Flexible hours, integrated care, respectful providers, and stable supplies of medicines and diagnostics across the continuum.
Quality means rapid linkages to care, sustained viral suppression, and a holistic support because living with HIV is not a clinical outcome.
It is a human outcome.
For women living with HIV, quality care must include reproductive autonomy, freedom from coercion, and protection from gender based violence.
It must include prevention and treatment for SDs, support for mental health, and pathways to economic security because inequality increases vulnerability, limits access, and undermines adherence and continuity of care.
We also need to be clear that HIV does not exist in isolation.
If our services are siloed, people will fall through the cracks.
Integration is not a slogan.
It is an efficiency strategy and an equity strategy.
That means integrating HIV interventions with sexual and reproductive health services, with tuberculosis prevention and care, with viral hepatitis services, with screening and treatment for non communicable diseases with mental health services, with social protection systems that reduces poverty, Food insecurity and instability.
In practical terms, I urge member states and partners to focus on three commitments.
First, reform laws, policies and practices that criminalize or exclude people and enforce zero tolerance to discrimination and violence in health settings.
Rights and xs rise together.
Second, fund and scale community led peer delivered services, especially those led by women living with HIV, populations in queer and transgender communities because these models consistently reach people earlier and reduce drop off and build trust.
Third, integrate HIV into broader health and development systems without losing what works, differentiated service delivery, confidentiality, and accountability for outcomes.
Integration must make services easier to use, not harder to find.
Ending AIDS requires more than biomedical tools.
It requires dignity in practice.
Let us choose policies grounded in evidence, services grounded in communities and systems grounded in equity.
Let us ensure that women living with HIV, key populations, queer and transgender people are not only protected by our commitments, but represented in our decisions.
Let us act with urgency, starting now because behind every delay is a life pushed into fear, silence, or loss.
Fully fund what works and laws and practices that drive people underground and hold ourselves accountable for measurable progress for those still being left behind.
I did say I speak from a feminist lens.
Top feminists, non negotiables going forward.
We are not going back to the dark days of AIDS.
We refuse that.
Sexual and reproductive health and rights and bodily autonomy are non negotiable.
Protect and fund feminist and women led organizations.
Community led and youth led commitments must be fulfilled.
There is no sunsetting of UN AIDS.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Yvette.
We're going to move to our second speaker, doctor Anton Mosalevsk.
Doctor Anton is a technical expert on key populations in the World Health Organization, Department of HIV, tuberculosis, hepatitis, and sexually transmitted infections in Geneva.
His background includes clinical medicine, public health policy, and research, and engagement with health and human rights organizations at national and international levels.
Doctor Antons Mosalevski is joining us online.
A question for you.
From WHO's perspective, what are the key priorities for ensuring that HIV services are people centered, stigma free, and equitable for key and vulnerable populations in the lead up to 2030? You have 4 minutes.
Thank you, Chair, colleagues, partners, and community representative for this opportunity to speak today.
It's a real honor, especially sharing the panel with inspiring leaders like Yvette and Erica.
So having worked at WHO for more than a decade in different places in different roles and having personally been part of affected communities for even longer, obviously, I know how deeply stigma and discrimination shaped people's willingness and ability to access health services.
As the Constitution of the World Health Organization reminds us, the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without discrimination.
This work remain as urgent as relevant as ever.
We cannot age by 2030 if people are afraid to access services.
Stigma, discrimination, criminalization, and exclusion continue to undermine prevention testing, treatment and care services.
But science is clear, people centered and stigma free services are not optional.
They are essential to achieving HIV goals and stronger primary health care.
WHO Global Health Sector strategy for HIV viral hepatitis and STI recognizes stigma, discrimination, criminalization, and gender inequality as major barriers to achieving 2030 targets.
Also, recent WO pulse surveys also show that disruption to essential and community based HIV services can increase incidence and death due to HIV and other health conditions, particularly among people and vulnerable populations.
In the current context of constrained resources, countries are increasingly undertaking prioritization exercises, but this must not become an excuse for leaving communities behind.
WHO continues to support evidence based approaches, including harm reduction and community led services that protect equitable access to care.
At the same time, we're seeing innovations that already was mentioned that could transform the HIV responses, including long acting prevention and treatment options, self care interventions, and differentiated service delivery models.
W recent guidelines from last year on long acting a cap aver as prep is one important example.
But innovation only matters for if all people can access, including communities to often excluded from health services.
The evidence consistently shows that HIV responses are more effective when community leadership is combined with strong public health systems.
Community led organizations help to identify barriers, strengthen trust, and improve retention in care while resilient health systems remain essential for sustainable progress.
We will continue to support member states and community through normative guidance, strategic information, community engagement and partnerships that help translate evidence into real change for people.
Last year, Director General, doctor Tedros called for a stronger HIV responses through meaningful partnership with people living with HIV and key populations, support for HIV research, prioritization of prevention, protection of human rights, and rejection of the politicization of science.
As discussion moves towards the upcoming high level meetings, we must turn commitments into funded action, protecting HIV prevention, treatment and community led responses while defending human rights and evidence based public health approaches.
They already mentioned ending AIs by 2030 will require governments, communities, multilateral organization, donors, health workers, and civil society to join forces around the shared commitment to equity, dignity, and human rights.
As a leader in global health agenda overall and founding co sponsor of UNH, WO remains committed to continue providing strategic and technical leadership and progress monitoring for the response, working across the UN system and with member states, partners, and communities.
At the time of constrained resources and growing pressure of health systems, we must resist any retreat from solidarity.
For many of us, this work is deeply personal and the true measure of HIV response will be whether every person everywhere can access prevention, treatment and care safely, equally, and free from stigma and discrimination.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Anton.
We are going to move to our third speaker for this panel, doctor Jared Beaton Jared Beaton is Senior Vice President and virology therapeutic area head at Gilad Sciences, leading programs in HIV, viral hepatitis, and pandemic viruses.
A long time HIV researcher, he has advanced major innovations, including prep and long acting treatments and previously served as a professor at the University of Washington.
Jared, thank you for being with us.
Can you help us answer the question? Why is it essential for industry to solicit and incorporate community and civil society perspectives across the HIV portfolio from early R&D through implementation? How can these partnerships help support equitable and sustained access? Over to you, you have 4 minutes.
Thank you.
Thank you to the moderator and all protocols oserved to those in the room and apologies for not being able to be there.
It is truly an honor to be here among so many leaders in the global fight against HIV, and the words of this morning are motivating for me personally and for all the work that we do.
The history of HIV has always been innovation operating in parallel, indeed hand in hand with advocacy and engagement of community and civil society.
As others have noted, the world is at a moment where innovation and advocacy together have achieved tools and systems across testing, treatment and prevention that could end new infections and end HIV as an individual and public health threat.
Industry contributes scientific innovation in research and development, manufacturing, and evidence generation.
But one of the clearest lessons from HIV is that science alone, medicines alone is not enough.
Innovation only delivers its full value and potential when it achieves impact in populations.
That requires that innovations are shaped by and delivered with the peoples and communities they are intended to serve.
Such shaping must start early.
Community and civil society perspectives help us in industry, ask better research questions, drive our science from chemistry to formulation to clinic, and conduct studies that are inclusive of populations facing greatest need for innovation.
Innovative products will only be impactful if they're grounded in understanding of what people need and prefer.
Such understanding is deeply informed by issues of stigma and discrimination, confidentiality, service location, acceptability, adherence, and indeed the realities of people's lives.
Commitment to innovation must continue through implementation.
A medicine, a diagnostic, a preventative option does not create impacts simply because it exists.
It must be understood, trusted, acceptable, deliverable, and integrated into how systems in ways that work for different communities.
Partnership between innovators and civil society and community partners is thus indispensable when innovations move from R&D and into delivery.
For Gillit.
I am proud of our long history in step change innovations in HIV treatment and prevention medicines and our continued focus on new scientific innovations.
And I'm equally proud that our long history and our present pairs our commitment to scientific innovation with robust and intentional partnerships with community, civil society, national health systems, and buy and multilateral programs that help support equitable access.
Access is not only about whether a tool is approved or supplied.
It is about whether people know it exists, whether they trust it, whether services are designed around their needs, and whether systems can deliver it consistently and without stigma discrimination.
For us, community is a partner in shaping the entire chain from early research to real world public health impact.
In our programs developing long acting innovations for HIV treatment and prevention, we partner in our discovery research in the design and execution of clinical trials, in results interpretation and dissemination, and in shaping access.
The past two years in particular have been an opportunity for us to have continuous engagement with community and with civil society.
I want to emphasize to the global community that you will have a committed and engaged partner in Gileo Sciences now and going forward.
Our vision is a world in which we together have ended the HIV epidemic for everyone everywhere, and Weguld will be here until that moment is fully realized.
As member states consider the 2026 Political Declaration, I hope the focus will be on preserving space for innovation and treatment and prevention to build on the successes of the last decades, to do that in treatment and prevention, and diagnosis and in care, and to strengthen the delivery and accountability systems that are needed to ensure those innovations are equitable, acceptable, available, and effective for people and communities.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Jared.
We will move swiftly to our first speaker in the panel, miss Cecilia Lotunu Sanu.
She is the founder and executive Director of Hope for Future Generations, established in 2001, A Ghanian public health nurse, midwife and social worker with over 27 years experience.
She works on women's empowerment, gender mainstreaming, HIV programming, social and behavioral change communication, psychosocial management in the HIV response.
Cecilia, communities and civil society organizations have played a critical role in reaching children and adolescent girls and young women with peer support, adherence counseling, psychosocial services, community based testing, and stigma reduction efforts, often filling gaps left by formal health system.
As funding pressures increase, what do most governments and partners do need to do now to institutionalize sustainably finance and meaningful integration of community based approaches into national HIV responses.
Over to you, Cecilia.
You have 4 minutes.
Thank you.
Erik gal and.
Madu Young viewing these ins as an optional.
It is a must.
It's important we ensure that former institutions and national HIV programs integrates HIV prevention, treatment and services into its budgets and services.
It's important for us to know that we cannot eliminate HIV in our countries without adequate funding to address this.
This includes providing direct and sustainable financing for community led organizations, integrating peer supporters and community health workers into health systems, and ensuring communities participate meaningfully in HIV response.
Protecting gains in the HIV response will require recognizing that communities are not temporarily implementers, but essential partners in delivering stigma free equitable services across the continuum.
Despite the global progress, children are still being left behind across the HIV care continuum.
In 2024, an estimated 120,000 children aged zero to 14 acquired HIV globally.
This is unacceptable.
Can you imagine a mother or a family continuously going through this? This reminds us that ending as in children and in families required urgent and sustainable investment.
I'm therefore calling on member states partners and all other people who put in resources to address this, to invest adequately in HIV among families and communities and everywhere that we need.
And we must continue to emulate the global funds principle of putting communities and addressing human rights when we want to talk about HIV, if we want to end HIV by 2030.
My sister Yvette, is it.
We must look at HIV with gender lens.
We must address the human rights issues.
We must put and ensure that we address the gaps that continue to increase HIV among adolescent girls and young women.
Civil society and communities go everywhere.
They are directly in touch with the people.
They stay with the people.
Communities know the language.
They speak the language.
We must ensure that communities are part of the delivery, they are part of the implementation, and they are part of the service.
Adding HIV needs a multi sectorial approach.
It needs sustainable funding, and you cannot eliminate or you cannot end HIV without civil society organizations, without communities, without the gender lens that we are talking about.
Civil society, communities, human rights organizations, Women led organizations are very important and we must ensure that we put in adequate sustainable resources to address community led monitoring, social contracting that work for people and ensure that the communities that are severely suffering and being abused, human rights issues are being addressed, they are center of the decision.
I'm therefore calling on member states, development partners, funding organizations, to put in adequate and sustainable resources, to work with the countries that carry the highest burden of HIV to ensure that policies, strategies, and all the innovations, the tools are there to support countries, to support communities, to support women and women led organizations to ensure that we address HIV among civil society, among communities, and address the human rights to ensure that communities continue leading, civil societies continue leading, women led organizations continue leading.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Cecilia.
I now open the floor for comments and questions.
Once I give the floor to a participant, please press the microphone button at that point, those of you in the room.
The green light on the microphone will guide the technician to activate your microphone.
Once your microphone is activated, you may proceed to make your intervention.
In order to allow for maximum participation, I request to please limit your intervention to 2 minutes.
Once the red light on your microphone starts blinking, it means there are 30 seconds left and you need to kindly wrap up your intervention.
I'll give the word now to Stop TB.
Excellencies, distinguished delegates, I have the honor to speak on behalf of the Stop TB Partnership.
I recognize the President of the General Assembly and thank member states, presenters and panelists for this important dialogue.
Tuberculosis remains the leading infectious disease killer worldwide and the leading killer of people living with HIV.
Yet it is still not adequately addressed on the HIV agenda or at least not with the urgency it demands.
In 2023, 1.25 million people died from TB, including 161,000 people living with HIV.
Over 660,000 people living with HIV developed TB.
Children, those with drug resistant TB faced the greatest gaps in diagnosis and care.
People living with HIV are 12 to 16 times more likely to develop TB, yet nearly half who develop TB are not diagnosed nor treated.
As a UN hosted partnership of over 2000 organizations, Stop TB has led a global consultation amongst the TB community to help inform this political declaration, calling for a fully integrated, people centered TBHIV responses with measurable time bound and fully financed commitments.
We already have agreed global targets, including providing TB preventative therapy to 45 million people by 2027, including for 15 million people living with HIV.
These commitments must be fully implemented and further strengthened.
We urge member states to include clear, ambitious TBHIV targets in this political declaration, covering screening, early diagnosis, preventative therapy, financing, innovation, health systems, and stigma, and to engage national TB programs and TBHIV communities to ensure strong implementation.
The time for addressing TB and HIV in silos has passed.
Health systems must transform to deliver integrated responses grounded in primary health care and strengthened community systems.
We call for integrated TB HIV services, including systematic TB screening at every health contact, universal access to rapid diagnostics, and a scale up of preventative therapy and shorter, safer treatments, including for drug resistant TB.
We must build resilient people centered health systems with decentralized community led service delivery and a supported health workforce.
We must accelerate research and innovation, ensuring access to new diagnostics, shorter regimens, child friendly treatments, and future vaccines.
Building on evidence and successful initiatives, including those pioneered by change facility for civil society, we must address TB HIV stigma, discrimination, and structural barriers while ensuring meaningful leadership and financing for community led response and responses.
Critically, we must fully finance TB and TB HIV responses, including at least $22 billion annually for TB services and $5 billion for research.
Excellencies, we will not end AIDS or ensure dignity for people living with HIV without ending TB.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
A kind reminder to please keep our interventions to 2 minutes, handing over the microphone to member state Indonesia.
Thank you, Chair and thank you to all the panelists for their valuable insights.
While the world has achieved the lowest number of new HIV infections and AIDS related death, declining global commitment and financing now risk reversing this heart and gains.
We must intensify our efforts and not retreat from them.
Indonesia believes that sustainable and resilient HIV responses require three key elements.
First, combating stigma and increased awareness.
HIV A should no longer be perceived as affecting only certain groups.
In Idsia new HIV infections are found among housewives, many of whom contract the virus unknowingly from their partners, increasing risk of mother to child transmission as well as to young people.
This highlights the importance of accessible testing, early treatment, public awareness, and stigma free health care for all.
Second, strong political commitment must be translated into integrated and measurable systems.
Indonesia continues to strengthen its response through our national action plan, including integrated HIV and tuberculsis surfaces, expanding testing and treatment, and stronger primary health care services.
HIV testing is now available in over 12,000 health facilities nationwide while surveillance and research collaboration continue to be enhanced.
Lastly, community involvement and global solidarity.
Civil society and peer networks play a vital role in reaching people in a vulnerable situation and ensuring trust based surfaces.
Moving forward, strengthen international cooperation, shared responsibility, and sustainable financing will remain essential to achieve the goal of ending AIDS by 2030.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
We will move to a virtual participant, ICW Global.
Thank you, Erica.
Excellencies and colleagues.
I speak today on behalf of feminist advocates, women living with HIV and community networks working across regions, and also as a young woman born with HIV in Honduras.
As consultations continue ahead of the HOM, one message has emerged clearly is that we must not go back.
This 2026 HLM is an opportunity to protect existing commitments already made by member states on human rights, standard quality, bodily autonomy, including comprehensive sex education, and community leadership.
The commitments must be reaffirmed because women and girls in all of our diversity continue to face stigma, discrimination, continue to face coercion, and criminalization when seeking health care and continue to be pushed away from prevention, treatment and care while increasing inequalities in our response.
We need equitable and stigma free services that are built on trust, informed choice, bodily autonomy, and safety.
We must now go back.
But we have a profound concern regarding the collapse of funding and community led responses.
Communities cannot continue to deliver services, accountability, and being asked for innovations when facing devastating funding cuts.
We call on member states to fulfill the commitment to allocate at least 30% of HIV budgets to community led responses, including dedicated funding for youth led and women led organizations.
We also want to stress the importance of protecting UNH.
The joint program has been effective through a unique global structure and meaningful community participations within the coverance and decision making spaces.
Its elimination will bring serious consequences for the entire AIDS response and we cannot afford that, especially at this time in history.
And colleagues, the HIV response has always moved forward because of us, because communists demand the dignity, justice, and rights.
Communities are not in addition to the response.
We are the response.
Thanks, Karen, can you wrap up? Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
We are moving to Avak in person.
My name is Michel Warren.
I'm the Executive Director of AVA, as well as the co chair of the Global HIV prevention Coalition co convened by UN AIDS and UNFPA and lead the long acting Prep coalition Secretariat as well.
All protocols observed in the interest of time, I want to thank all of the presenters just now for what they said.
I'm struck as I look around this room.
I'm reminded of 25 years ago, and I'm reminded in part because I look around and some of you are not that old.
But 25 years ago, many of us gathered here for the first UN General Assembly special session on HIV and AIDS and it changed the trajectory of the AIDS response.
Everything we have achieved collectively in these 25 years started in these halls in June of 2001.
I think it's important to reflect on that history.
As we learned from the Canadian Prime Minister, nostalgia is not a strategy, but the history matters and I reflect on the last 25 years of the targets that have mattered and how those targets have been achieved in reaching people living with HIV in record numbers, remarkable numbers.
People couldn't have believed that 25 years ago.
How did we do it as a collective? They were audacious targets.
They were achievable targets.
They were measurable.
There was clarity of who was to be held to account for those targets.
There was political support at the highest levels and at the community levels, more importantly, It was a collective priority, and perhaps most importantly, they were resourced in ways that we could not have imagined before 2001.
As we spend today in the next five weeks leading up to this June of 2026, we have to ensure when it comes to long acting prevention, when it comes to treatment in all its forms, including long acting, when it comes to a rights based agenda that we do targeting that isn't just good because it worked in a mathematical model, that it's not just good because it sounded nice in a press release, but that it actually delivers the impacts that we have seen these last 25 years.
That's how we will be remembered.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I now give the floor to member state Philippines.
Thank you, Madam Moderator, and we thank the panelists this morning for their remarks.
The Philippines reaffirms its commitment to ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 and underscores the importance of a multi sectoral science and evidence based and rights based HIV response.
The Philippines is strengthening implementation of its National HIV and AIDS Policy Act, which guarantees confidentiality and non discrimination for persons living with HIV and ensures access to comprehensive prevention, treatment, care, and support services.
Our seventh Aid medium term plan serves as a national blueprint for action under five strategic pillars to prevent, treat, protect, strengthen, and sustain action.
The Department of Health is also expanding HIV testing, prevention, and workplace awareness campaigns while scaling up access to pre exposure prophylaxis, anti retroviral therapy, psychosocial support, and innovative prevention tools.
The National Health Insurance Program has also expanded outpatient HIV AIDS treatment packages with financial protection and confidentiality safeguards.
We likewise recognize the indispensable role of communities and civil society organizations in the HIV response and acknowledge also the valuable support of UN aids, the UN system at large, development partners, and local stakeholders in strengthening the Philippines capacities to address the challenges of HIV infections among vulnerable populations.
In conclusion, Madam Moderator, we would like to call for a balanced outcome political declaration grounded in science that will promote our shared commitment to end AIDS by 2030.
I thank you.
Thank you very much.
We will move to online participant Eurasian movement to the right to Health in prisons.
You have 2 minutes.
Greetings, everyone.
Thank you.
My name is Anna Koshekova.
I'm with the Eurasian movement for the Right to Health in prisons.
Despite significant global progress in the HIV response, people in prisons and other closed settings remain left behind.
This is driven by the persistence of security measures prevailing over patients' needs, insufficient and fragmented funding for prison based HIV programs and ongoing stigma and discrimination.
In the ECA region, access to essential services, including HIV counseling and testing, adherence support, opioid agonist therapy, harm reduction, hepatitis C treatment, remains limited and in some countries entirely absent.
Continuity of care following release is still a challenge.
We must recognize that prison health is public health.
Responsibility for health care in prisons should lie with the Ministries of Health, not law enforcement bodies to ensure alignment with national health systems and standards.
The principle of equivalence of care must be fully upheld, guaranteeing that people in prisons have access to the same services as the general population.
The potential of people in prisons should be fully used in service provision, enabling 247 access to community based HIV services in closed settings.
Deprivation of liberty must never result in deprivation of the right to health.
With the right policies and investments and with meaningful engagement of people with lived experiences in prisons, closed settings can become models of effective people centered HIV service delivery.
Over.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I now give the floor to NCD Alliance.
My name is Daniel Cook, and I'm here to share my lived experience on behalf of the NCD Alliance.
HIV, non communicable diseases, and mental health conditions are interlinked and we cannot end AIDS or realize the right to health for all without addressing these issues together.
I am a living example that harmonized care saves lives.
I stand here today undetectable, housed, employed, and 4.5 years sober.
Because of the work that is done in spaces like this, I had access to care that recognized these issues were interconnected.
I was able to access HIV treatment alongside mental health support, addiction recovery services, trauma therapy, allowing me to heal as a whole person.
I have been undetectable since receiving treatment after my diagnosis 13 years ago.
Today, that would not be the case.
The organization that provided free testing and arranged all of my initial medical appointments no longer exists.
The group that paid my rent at a sober house while I found employment and fostered my financial independence has lost so much funding that it cannot provide the service.
Everywhere we are seeing the erosion of the systems that people with HIV rely on to survive.
Without these resources, I'm seeing younger people coming into the rooms of recovery lost and unsupported.
With funding cuts and global health architectural reform, integrated and people centered care is more important than ever.
Integration must strengthen health systems and community responses so people can access care that reflects the realities of their lives.
The NCD Alliance calls for rights based, gender responsive and person centered services that reduce stigma, exclusion, and inequities.
In my sobriety, I've been to many treatment facilities that had zero understanding of HIV, places where I have been isolated by people who are afraid to catch a disease that I cannot transmit.
But I also know what is possible when care is compassionate, coordinated, and community led, and I urge member states to strengthen these commitments in the political Declaration so that people living with HIV everywhere have that same possibility.
Thank you for my life.
Thank you very much.
I hand over the word to member state Spain.
Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you to the panelists for their insights.
Dear colleagues, HIV remains one of the diseases most affected by stigma and discrimination.
Social inequalities, rejection, and legal barriers continue to limit equal access to prevention, testing, treatment and care, especially for people and communities in more vulnerable situations.
For this reason, eliminating HIV related stigma and discrimination is not only a goal in itself, but also essential to ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
We believe that work on human rights as well as the fight against stigma and discrimination are key parts of an effective global response to HIV.
For this reason, Spain identified the elimination of stigma and discrimination as a political priority during its presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2023 and decided to join UNH global Partnership for action to eliminate all forms of HIV related stigma and discrimination.
The commitment remains strong and is more necessary than ever at a time when the human rights based response is facing growing threats.
Spain is therefore leading a world package on addressing stigma and discrimination related to HIV and other infectious diseases within the European Commission's EU for Health Joint Action for the prevention of infection related cancers in Europe.
In this framework, one of the lines of work is to encourage more European countries to join the global partnership to eliminate all forms of HIV related stigma and discrimination.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I hand over to Medical Impact.
Can you hear me? There.
Distinguished Chair, excellency colleagues and members of civil society.
The 2021 Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS recognized that inequalities, stigma, and criminalization and exclusion continue to accelerate the epidemic.
Yet, five years later, many of those commitments remain unfulfilled while communities continue carrying the burden of delayed political action.
Today, amid institutional uncertainty and the UNAT reform process, we must reaffirm our faith in multilateralism.
No country can confront HIV alone.
Global cooperation, expanded treatment access, strengthened surveillance systems, protected scientific collaboration, and elevated community leadership within global health governance.
Weakening those mechanisms now would place decades of progress at risk.
At the same time, innovation must reach everyone.
Access to prep, PEP, and long acting prevention and treatment technologies must become a global equity priority, not a privilege for high income settings.
Expanding these tools require moving beyond punitive approaches towards evidence based people centered public health harm reduction strategies that reduce vulnerability and strengthen trust in health systems.
We're also witnessing shrinking civic space, declining funding, and growing pressure on community systems.
If reforms prioritize efficiency over people, the first affected will once again be the most vulnerable communities.
We must also confront unfinished commitments on tuberculosis, remaining the leading cause of death among people living with HIV worldwide.
HIV and TB responses cannot continue operating separately if we are serious about ending AIDS by 2030.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
We move over to Afro Global Alliance.
You have 2 minutes.
Thank you.
I wish to make a brief intervention on integration of TB, HIV, and other diseases within our national health strategies monitoring systems, reporting frameworks, and annual review progress.
As we discuss sustainability and stronger health systems, we must recognize that diseases do not exist in isolation, and therefore, our responses cannot continue to operate in silos.
TB remains the leading killer of people living with HIV globally, yet in many countries, TB and HIV programming financing, monitoring and accountability systems remain fragmented.
Integration should not simply become a slogan or a one sided progress process, it must be deliberate.
Balanced and people centered.
We need joint national health strategies that align TB, HIV, other diseases priorities within broader universal health coverage and primary health health care agendas.
This means integrated planning, budgeting, harmonized monitoring systems, shared indicators, reporting frameworks, coordinated data systems, and joint annual reviews involving governments, communities, civil society, and affected population.
At the same time, integration must preserve and strengthen disease specific expertise and community structures.
Integration should not reduce visibility or funding for TB or other diseases, but rather improve efficiency, patient outcomes, and overall health system resilience.
Communities and civil society must remain central to this process because People affected by TB HIV and other diseases experience the health system as one system, not separate programs.
I therefore call on governments, donor, and partners to institutionalize transparent joint reviews, public annual reporting mechanisms that measure collective progress across sectors and programs.
If we truly want resilience, equitable health systems, then integration must be rooted in collaboration, accountability, equity, and meaningful community engagement.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
We now move to member state Israel.
Is the mic on? Okay.
Thank you, Madam Moderator.
On the road to the June Declaration, we should be guided by scientific evidence, the realities of the way people actually live and the hard won experience of the communities and civil society organizations that have been at the forefront of this fight from the beginning.
Sub Saharan Africa remains at the center of the global HIV burden, a region where adolescent girls and young women face a disproportionate risk of infection.
At the same time, key populations are essential to the response in every region.
They and their partners account for 26% of new infections in Sub Saharan Africa and 74% outside it.
Yet the Secretary-General report notes a regression in human rights affecting key populations, including four new countries introducing criminalization of same sex relationships in 2025.
Where people face stigma, criminalization, and exclusion from services, prevention and treatment fall short, where they are reached with dignity and genuine access to care, progress is possible and measurable.
Israel can speak from experience.
The latest Ministry of Health data show that new HIV diagnoses declined by 22% in 2024 compared with 2023.
Israeli public health experts have linked this progress to several factors, including expanded prep access, online services, and tailored outreach to key populations.
Israel therefore supports a declaration that names key populations, men who have sex with men, transgender persons, sex workers, and people who use drugs.
And that commits to ensuring that services are accessible with dignity and without fear for all people affected by HIV, recognizes the indispensable role of civil society and treats comprehensive sexual education and sexual and reproductive health as essential public health tools.
We cannot reach the 2030 targets unless we protect those most vulnerable and ensure that key populations are not left behind.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I pass over the microphone to HealthCp Press the microphone.
Thank you, Excellencies and Madam facilitator, all protocols observed.
I think Mitchell mentioned the first time we were here more than 25 years ago, but in fact, the only reason we had a UN General Assembly special session on HIV was because of what happened outside of these walls.
Communities were demanding action from the UN system and from member states around the world to wake up and do what they were not doing.
And look at how far we've come.
But we're actually in more than two decades later, a circumstance where the unthinkable is happening, where we're moving backwards despite tools that could end this pandemic if deployed at scale, including deployment of community centered equitable care through a feminist lens, as we've heard.
What must the high level meeting do in this space? The reality is we're already seeing governments forced and taking action to cut investments in people centered care, whether that's EID onsite EID, for HIV exposed infants, or whether it's drop in centers led by key populations.
This is unacceptable and we must not sugarcoat it.
Second, the scientific advancement of long acting prep means nothing if access strategies sharply ration volumes so that communities most in need already are facing stockouts.
Whether that's as is the case with the paltry volume target of only 3 million people for access to long acting Lena Capar when so much more can be done.
Your Excellencies, we have three requests.
One, commit to hard targets for scaled up funding from all sources because in reality, we cannot be pennywise and pound foolish when it comes to community centered, equitable care.
We can't let these interventions that are saving lives end up on the cutting room floor over and over again and expect to defeat HIV by 2030.
Second, we must rebuild, expand, and reinvest in independent community led monitoring.
It's more essential than it ever has been to cut through the magical thinking about equitable service delivery with the reality of what is actually happening at the coal face of the clinic, driven by data.
Finally, we request that the high level meeting's political declaration insist that access to scientific advancements like long acting en Kap ofviir for prep and other long acting technologies, be geographically universal and to challenge approaches that rely on geographic exclusion and risk unnecessarily prolonging the pandemic by pushing entire communities out of access to potentially pandemic defeating tools and subjecting them to excessive pricing caused by unchecked monopolies.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
We move over to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Hello.
Thank you very much.
My name is doctor Gracia Lato, faculty of Einstein College of Medicine, and also the Director of Health of the Women Caucus in the United States.
Thank you for the honor to speak and specifically address, as mentioned here, the critical role of integrating HIV interventions with other regional and national health initiatives to end the AIDS epidemic as a public health issue by 2030, since integrated care models are associated with 67% higher uptake of HIV testing, 42% increase in ART initiation, higher rates of retention of care and viral suppression rates.
These global data, which is mostly from Sub Saharan Africa, which as we know, is the region of the world with the highest rates of HIV and AIDS specifically on younger women.
This data demonstrates that service integration in underserved and vulnerable populations boost the sustainability of the HIV response by targeting coordinated patient centered and comprehensive care to eliminate late diagnosis and delaying treatment not only for HIV, but also for other associated medical conditions, as is discussed here by multiple organizations and member states.
To this end, key integration strategies must implement the following.
First, gender sensitive approaches that tailor health services to address specific gender related barriers to achieve equitable outcomes.
This is critical in Sub Saharan Africa, where young women under 24 are three times more likely to acquire HIV than males their age.
Second, sexual and reproductive health integration that combines HIV care with contraception, antenatal care, and HV screening, providing women with one stop access, increasing testing uptake and reducing the stigma that prevents women from accessing services.
Third, we need to integrate screening and treatment also for non communicable diseases such diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease.
Because all of these contribute to the high health burden and mortality in HIV survivors.
Fourth, integrating mental health and social protections, which was mentioned by some of the speakers before.
Why? Because these HIV services can overcome barriers to treatment adherence, particularly those facing high levels of violence and discrimination.
Last, we need to coordinate and coordinate and integrate TV and viral hepatitis services.
In this way, we have a one stop shop testing and treatment that prevents fragmented care and reduces mortality rates.
This is the time to establish partnerships and collaborative efforts across multiple disciplines and across all nations to end the 2038 pandemic.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I hand over to member state Uruguay.
Thank you, Chair and thanks so much to all of the panelists we have been hearing this morning.
On behalf of Uruguay, we want to start by commending the work of civil society organizations and other stakeholders in the fight against HIV AIDS.
I'd also like to stress Uruguay strong support to the high level meeting and the political declaration that we will start negotiating soon that we hope will be grounded in a clear human rights approach and also the HIV global strategy.
Uruguay aligns itself with the global targets established by UN AIDS and the 2021 Political Declaration on HIV AIDS, particularly the commitment to accelerate progress towards the 905-90-5905 targets, reduce new infections, prevent AIDS related death, and eliminate all forms of stigma and discrimination.
At our national level, we come with a national integrated health system which facilitates coordination between public and private providers under the principles of universality and equity.
Within this framework, access to antro viral treatments is guaranteed free of charge through the national resources funds.
Late diagnosis continue to represent a significant challenge as it may result in individuals entering the health system with severe immunosuppression or advanced disse.
For this reason, Uruguay prioritizes the promotion of testing, epidemiological surveillance, and early identification of cases, particularly among populations in situations of greater vulnerability.
Prevention must be addressed from the perspective of sexual and reproductive health and rights, human rights, and non discrimination, and also with a focus on key populations.
Uruguay promotes an HIV response integrated into broader sexual and reproductive health policies, including education, prevention of sexually transmitted infections, access to information, counseling, diagnosis, and comprehensive care.
Law number 18 426 on sexual and reproductive health forms part of this broader framework, which recognizes that HIV prevention cannot be separated from the exercise of rights, autonomy, gender equality, and universal access to health services, including sexual and reproductive health services.
Uruguay National Health objectives for 23 explicitly includes the reduction of HIV AIDS related morbidity and mortality, as well as the elimination of vertical transmission of syphilis and HIV.
For us, achieving this goal requires a timely prenatal care, testing during pregnancy, immediate access to treatment, follow up for pregnant persons and newborns, and effective coordination across different levels of care.
This constitutes a public health priority closely linked to human rights, children rights, and equity and social protection.
I thank again, all stakeholders for being present today and we look forward to work together to have a strong and human rights based declaration.
Thank you very much.
We move to our last speaker from the floor.
That is the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations.
Thank you.
The 2026 high level meeting comes at a sensitive but important moment for the global HIV response.
Meaningful progress has been made, but it remains fragile, uneven, and vulnerable to reversal if political attention, funding, and implementation momentum weaken.
The political Declaration should therefore recognize HIV requires urgent and sustained political leadership, community agency, and financing driving implementation, outcomes, and accountability for impact.
First, we encourage member states to sustain HIV as an urgent health priority.
Stable and predictable financing remains essential, including through mobilizing diversified financing models at national, regional and global levels.
Second, accelerating progress will require sustaining rapid development and uptake of innovation across prevention, testing, treatment and care.
Future progress will depend on continued innovation in diagnostics alongside the advances in viral load monitoring.
This should be combined with swift access to long acting prevention options and treatment approaches that support stable adherence and hence health related quality of life and promote investment in R&D with the aim of also developing an HIV vaccine and cure.
Innovation and equitable access are mutually reinforcing, not competing objectives.
The Political declaration should support policy environments that enable, protect, and value discovery, research and development while strengthening practical pathways for timely, sustainable and equitable access.
Third, ambitious HIV goals will only be realized if matched by practical delivery measures across the full cascade, reaching people with prevention and testing, ensuring timely diagnosing and rapid linkage to care, initiating effective treatment, supporting retention, and adherence and achieving and sustaining viral suppression.
FEMA and its members stand ready to contribute that constructively through R&D, manufacturing, partnerships, support for innovation, and practical evidence based solutions that strengthen country led leadership and implementation to sustain long term progress.
Thank you very much.
We have heard amazing interventions, both from our panelists, from the floor and colleagues joining us online.
We've listened about the call for fully integrated people centered response, the importance to keep TV in the conversation.
We have highlighted the importance for a multi sectorial response where communities, industry, and member states all have a role to play.
The need to address stigma and discrimination, the need to fully finance HIV and TB.
We need a fully funded global fund with equitable TB financing.
Thank you very much for everyone and I want to give the opportunity for the panelists in 2 minutes to recap what has been shared in this and provide Some guidance.
In the next few days, the co facilitators will share the zero draft of the political declaration and member states will work to deliver a strong declaration to lead us towards the end of HIV and AIDS as a public health threat.
I want to ask the panelists with this in mind, what is your message to member states? What should they keep in mind while they are negotiating this political declaration? I will start with Cecilia.
Over to you.
You have 2 minutes.
If Cecilia, you are having trouble, we come back to you, Anton.
Thanks, Erica.
You can you hear me right now? We can hear you well.
Okay.
So I think I'll be much shorter than 2 minutes.
I think to summarize this rich discussion, I would say that the discussion reinforced that community leadership and strong public health systems are not competing priorities, but mutually reinforcing and both essential for ending AIDS by 2030.
Also in the time of the constrained resources and growing pressure on health systems, this is especially important for key and vulnerable populations who face intersecting stigma and discrimination and other barriers to equitable access to services.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Antons, doctor Jarrett.
Thank you, and thank you for all the interventions.
It is much to summarize, but I think as Anton said, I will be shorter than 2 minutes.
It reinforces for me and I think for all of us in preparing the declaration for June, that innovation and advocacy, research and development and access all go hand in hand and it is only through partnership and all of us together that we will achieve what is truly a common goal.
The words from the audience today and especially the reflections looking backward to where the world was 2.5 decades ago and where it could be a decade from now, remind us how much we can achieve when we do all the work together.
Thank you for the interventions and for the continued partnership, and we will continue to be here in partnership.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Cecilia.
Manifest yourself.
I'm going to assume there's some technical issue, so I'm going to move to my sister Yvette here.
Thank you so much, Erica.
Member States, as we go into drafting the political declaration, I want to bring to you personal experience.
I have a 26-year-old daughter who is born HIV negative.
I am also a mother of a queer child.
Those two things is what keeps me awake at night, is what brings me into this room miles and miles away from my own country and my province Limpopo.
If we do not stand up against discrimination and criminalization of populations, we will not end AIDS by 2030.
What I expect from member state is to ensure everybody has the same human right, every person is able to live freely the way they want to live.
Please do not kill my children.
Mike drops, sister.
I'm not going to keep you much time away from your lunch.
But before concluding, I would like to remind participants that the third panel discussion entitled Adré structural inequalities and promoting equity and inclusion in the HIV response, including removal of legal barriers and shrinking saving space will begin promptly at 3:00 P.M.
In this room.
Thank you very much for joining us this morning.
Enjoy your lunch.
Okay.