Winnie Byanyima (UNAIDS) on the Interactive Multi-Stakeholder Hearing for the 2026 High-level Meeting on HIV/AIDS - Press Conference

Okay.
Thanks very much.
We're very pleased to be joined today by Under Secretary-General Winnie Byanyima, the Executive Director of the Joint UN Program on HIV AIDS or UN AIDS for short.
And she's here to brief ahead of the interactive multi stakeholder hearing for the 2026 high level meeting on HIV AIDS.
To her left is Michael Ighadaro, the Co-chair of the Multi-stakeholder Task Force, and they will now brief you on the forthcoming multi stakeholder hearing.
Miss Byanyima, welcome.
Farhan, and thank you, members of the press who are here and online, and thank you, my colleague for being here.
We are at a perilous moment in the global AIDS response.
Decades of progress are now at risk because the world is pulling back just when we need to push forward.
The collapse of the AID model has hit the HIV response like a shock wave because HIV, a global and very successful response to HIV was for many countries, underpinned by AID, ODA, And now, with its sudden collapse, many countries find themselves unprepared to take on the full response that was being supported through PEPFAR, through Global Fund, and through other support.
Prevention services have collapsed.
Treatment expansion has stalled, community organizations who are the backbone of the response are being forced to shut their doors.
I'll give you some examples of immediate and devastating impacts.
In Uganda, Pp, which is a prevention tool, its uptake fell by 31% in just nine months between December 2024 and September of 2025.
In Burundi, it fell by 64% 64% in the same period.
Even the most basic prevention tools are slipping out of reach.
In Nigeria, for example, condom distribution fell by 55% in just three months from December 2024 to March 2025.
Community led services.
These are led by ordinary people who are well trained but who serve their communities have been decimated.
In eight countries, we found that community led services in those eight countries were 99.9 funded externally, only 0.1% funded domestically.
When donors pulled out, communities were left with nothing.
The human cause is unbearable.
In 2024 at our last count of UN AIDS, 570 girls and young women were infected by HIV every day of that year, 570 girls.
And yet, our count is that 60% of women led HIV organizations have lost their funding or shut down completely.
People most at risk are being abandoned.
And as if that were not bad enough, losing money suddenly in a context where replacing it is difficult.
Fiscal constraints of the most heavily burdened countries are huge.
At the same time, we are witnessing a coordinated global pushback on human rights, the very rights that make progress against HIV possible.
Gender equality, sexual reproductive health and rights, the rights of LGBTQ people are under attack in many parts of the world.
But this is not accidental.
It is organized, it's well funded.
It is geopolitical.
It is proxy wars for critical minerals, for energy, for influence that are being fought instrumentalizing the rights of the most marginalized people.
Let me give you a few more examples of what this means.
In Kenya, most drop in centers for what we call key populations, LGBTQ people, sex workers, people who inject drugs have closed.
Nigeria has lost at least five such clinics.
In Uganda, 45% of programs serving the key populations have partially or fully shut down.
In Zimbabwe, where there were excellent services for sex workers, in key places where they could go and safely get what they need for prevention, testing and treatment, these have collapsed entirely in 2025.
77% of harm reduction programs for people who inject drugs report severe disruption.
So global response was built on solidarity.
PEPFA global fund, UN aids, these institutions came and transformed the epidemic saving millions of lives.
But with this aid model under strain today, we are seeing real consequences for people in developing countries.
So let me be clear.
Science and science is offering us solutions that could end this epidemic by 2030.
Long acting prep, long acting prevention, long acting treatments, medicines that we would not have thought about ten years ago.
All this is there, but the sudden cut in funding, plus the pushback on human rights is pulling us away from achieving the end of AIDS.
That's why today's multi stakeholder hearing and the high level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in June are so critically important.
It is at that meeting that governments will be recommitting to a progressive, actionable political declaration to steer the world in the right direction, setting ambitious targets for 2030, a direction that could save millions of lives and end AIDS as a public health threat.
Today, are 9.3 million people living with HIV waiting to get on treatment.
We must get them on.
At the last count, we had 1.3 million new infections in 2024.
We must stop new infections and it's possible.
But our biggest challenge is the shifting funding landscape as well as the pushback on rights.
This meeting was about recommitting and civil society asserting that they are in this battle and here to stay.
Thank you.
Thank you, Your Excellency, UNAIDS Executive Director.
Thanks for having me.
My name is Michael Ighadaro.
I'm a member of the multi state task force of HLM.
I'm Nigerian.
I work for an organization called Global Black Gay Connect.
I'm a gay man living with HIV, migrant and also an American now just as four years ago.
I really want to this might be hopefully not the last HLM that I ever get to be part of for HIV and we have to ensure it's not.
We have to really fight to ensure it's not the last HLM we ever see.
The reason why I say that is a 18.
When I was 18, I had my first speech at this building.
I just arrived from Nigeria because I was displaced by my parents because I'm gay.
I moved here for the AIDS conference in 2012.
I came here and I came to give my speech during the meeting here at this building.
And, um, 15 years later, I'm back here, gay man leading an organization for gay men across the world.
I just had my child who is HIV negative.
That is science and that is a win, and that is a win that the He response has had for all of us, and we should celebrate that.
But one thing is for sure, all of those could go back because we don't have a cure.
If I stop taking my medications right now, I could literally die.
I will have no future.
That is the same for many people around the world.
The AIDS response is not over.
We have so much more to fight for, and this is really what this HLM and what society are coming into this conversation with to ensure that member states and the world realizes that we don't have a cure.
We have amazing science, we have long acting prevention, treatment.
But we don't have a cure.
We have so much more to do.
We have structural barriers, we have human rights barriers across different sectors.
In just the last UNH report, you can see 55% of new HIV infections are among key populations, especially gay men and trans people.
That data is crucial and now that data house, we are in the space whereby the half of that data could disappear, UNH could be gone, and key population data could be gone with it.
And key population data is what we use to hold our government accountable to say, Hey, our lives matter.
UNA is one of the only institution that disaggregates key populations data, gay men, trans people, sex worker, people with drugs.
That's the only place we can get it.
I will share a more personal example.
When I was in Nigeria, when I was attacked for being gay as an activist.
I remember going to abjer and the first place I went to was a UNA office to go have conversation about my personal safety.
And that remains the same right now.
That is at risk.
Many places across the world where UN offer safety, offer a space for convening, offers a space for holding government accountable could be gone.
This is an urgency and this is not about restructuring.
It's not about going out of money.
It's about people's lives.
It's about life and debt situation.
I really want to emphasize that as CSOs we are coming into this conversation.
This is about our lives.
The AID response is not over.
While we have tools, we all could still die, especially those living with HIV if we stop taking our treatment.
If the structural inequalities and makes it like we don't our treatment, we would literally die.
Again, I wanted to just emphasize that we have so much more to do, that key populations are not just numbers, they are people, they are me, that's my child, and there are millions of people around the world who still depend on the safety and security that UNAIDS provides.
Thank you.
Well welcome thanks very much.
Thanks a lot for that contribution.
I'll now open the floor to the media for questions.
Yes, please.
Thank you very much for debriefing and thank you so much for sharing your personal testimony.
That's Ama Au with Al Koal Arabi.
My question is regarding Nigeria.
You mentioned that tandem distribution dropped by about 20% and you said it is because of funding and human rights pushback.
If you could just elaborate on what do you mean exactly by human rights pushback and what do you mean when you say it is a geopolitical, it is a problem that is happening by design.
Who are the actors who are benefiting from people losing this type of protection.
Thank you.
should I answer? Yes, please.
Let us separate two things.
One is the collapse of the aid model.
That first, over the years, in the last Six, seven years, we've seen ODA coming down down down down.
Last year, the cut in ODA total ODA was up to 25%, the largest cut since records started.
So all the donors have been cutting their aid for development and investing more in fighting wars and so on.
Aid has been declining.
But there was also a very rapid cut that came from the largest donor to global health last year.
So let's be clear, it wasn't one donor, it's a general trend of decline of ODA.
The development financing that depended very largely on a charitable contribution, ODA, is under question, is reducing very sharply.
That has resulted in a huge impact for our work on HIV because for many countries with a high burden of HIV who mainly in S San Africa.
They depended very much on external assistance.
With that cut, the parts of the systems that came out that were most affected were prevention, for example.
Prevention was largely done by communities.
They reach out to their own people.
They know who needs a condom, who needs prep.
That part of the work suffered the most because it was mostly sponsored by external assistance, less by domestic resources.
Efforts are there.
These countries that were hugely impacted by the loss of dire have moved quickly to integrate systems to fill gaps, but it doesn't happen overnight.
These These cuts, I'm telling you, like in Nigeria, condom distribution dropping by 55% is a result of this sudden cut in aid.
Rights is another matter.
The pushback on rights has also been going on for a while.
It has intensified.
We have seen for the first time since we started tracking human rights.
Criminalization of same sex relationships.
For the first time, we are seeing an increase in criminal laws.
Countries like Mali, Burkina Faso, Njia and most recently Senegal have passed harsh laws, already had laws criminalizing same sex relations, but have passed even harsher laws.
Another country is considering such a law is Ghana.
In many parts of eastern southern Africa, there are discussions of even harsh laws.
Uganda passed one.
There are also discussions there are also moves to shrink civic space, the space of civil society to work and serve and deliver services.
Uganda recently passed a sovereignty defense of sovereignty law, which shrinks civil society space further, curtails funding for external financing of civil society.
This is the environment in which our work finds itself.
Let me give you an example.
People who do outreach to communities, gay men who reach out to other gay men, to give them what they need, or sex workers who reach out to other sex workers to give them what they need for protection, for treatment.
These are now if they are working on same sex relations, if they are gay, they are called promoters of homosexuality, and this is illegal.
If you've been running a clinic to distribute condoms, to distribute LROVs, you are now in the law seen as a promoter of homosexuality and therefore a criminal.
The criminal laws are taking services away from people very directly.
This is what we are up against.
Just a quick follow up on the aid.
Thank you very much for your response.
Did your office ever try to evaluate the root causes of the problem? You mentioned that the cutting of aid is problematic.
How can we move from giving people and having them depend on aid to sustainable? I don't know how to Financing.
Exactly.
Maybe helping them build their own businesses.
Is that something that you ever That is a very important question you have asked.
The aid model was never supposed to be permanent.
It was a support.
Aid also came with its own problems of creating more dependency, of creating even parallel structures that countries could not afford in the long term.
Many factors were problematic with aid.
Now, with this sudden cut of aid, Thinking about health sovereignty has increased.
We are seeing more initiatives across the world about how to achieve health sovereignty.
President Mahama of Ghana is leading something called the Akrari set.
It's very much about how to generate enough domestic resources to finance health of all people in Africa.
It's also very much about how to generate more flows of development financing aside from aid.
So that's one initiative.
There are even others.
There are also efforts that are global like a G 20 year the year before last.
Led by Brazil, Brazil led and launched a global coalition for regional production of medicines.
So a global effort to support continents like Africa to increase their capacity to produce their own medicines because part of achieving health sovereigncy is being able to produce for yourself in your region.
So there are initiatives.
We are optimistic and we are supporting UNA is supporting and active in some of these initiatives.
We are on the Technical Committee for the Aqua reset.
Africa Union has another initiative.
There is thinking of going beyond aid to finding more financing streams to support the health sovereignty of countries.
Thank you.
Any further questions in the row? I'll turn the floor over to anyone who wants to have questions online.
All right.
If not, then I will once more thank our guests.
Thank you so much to Winnie Bana, the executive Director of UNAIDS, to Michael Igaro, co chair of the multi stakeholder Task Force.
Thank you so much.
It was a very eloquent presentation from both of you.
Thanks so much.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for having us.
Thank you.
Thanks.