AIDS Today

"It is a dangerous myth that perpetuates the idea that there is simply a bit of unfinished business to handle and then the era of AIDS will be behind us. The narrative leads inexorably to donors and governments committing less money in the long term, and it results in non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and communities having diminished power to make arguments addressing the structural drivers of inequality and injustice that have always shaped the contours of the AIDS epidemic. "

"AIDS Today: Tell no lies and claim no easy victories" is the first edition of a biennial publication from the International HIV/AIDS Alliance (Alliance) that presents the global state of the civil society response to AIDS. It is published with the intent "to spark a timely debate about the global AIDS response: what it has achieved, what it can teach others fighting for health and justice, and what remains to be done to bring about a sustainable end to AIDS."

The online magazine includes:

• "Executive Summary - ...The authors of the searing essays in this collection agree on one thing: maintaining vigilance is the only strategy that has ever worked in the fight against AIDS. Anything less will signal certain defeat in the long term. The truth is that at a time when AIDS fatigue is considered to be acceptable by some people in international NGOs, large bureaucracies and United Nations agencies; there are still 35 million people who are living with HIV in their bodies. There are daily assaults on the rights and dignity of people who are women, girls, gay, transgendered, sex workers, prisoners, or who use drugs....
• Essay: Unravelling the human rights response - Mark Heywood provides a short history of the rise and fall of the human rights approach in the HIV response.
• Insight: Beauty and the beast - Monica Leonardo [writes]on how transgender activists won the right to gender identity in Argentina.
• Insight: Women, power, sex and politics - Lead author, Sisonke Msimang, recalls how "in conversation after conversation, women told us that AIDS felt like it was simply one assault too many."
• Essay: Funding the fight to end AIDS - Asia Russell [writes] on how funding for HIV has stagnated at the very time when we have the potential to reverse the epidemic.
• Insight: Supply and demand - Pauline Londeix outlines why drug prices and trade barriers are blocking drug access and what activists can do about it.
• Essay: Overcoming the epidemic of fear - Martin Choo explains why the social context in which people living with HIV live, and love, matters most of all.
• Insight: Against the grain - Anya Sarang provides the story of the Andrey Rylkov Foundation in Russia, which started as an initiative to protect the health and rights of people who use drugs.
• Essay: The architecture of AIDS - Robin Gorna [describes]... building a movement, sustaining a response.
• Insight: Smoking out the gays - Dr. Frank Mugisha [writes] on how hatred has distracted Ugandans and reversed hard-won gains in the fight against AIDS."

The website includes a comments section for online discussion.