17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City

Between August 1 – 9, five Uniterra partners from southern and western Africa participated in the 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City which brought together more than 23,000 participants from around the globe. The delegates attended hundreds of workshops, poster exhibits, booths and activities in the dynamic global village to share, learn, network, and exchange knowledge and best practices.

Some of the key messages generated at the conference included the need to: concentrate on preventative measures, protect human rights at the centre of response, and sustain the commitments of the donors, governments and non-governments and ourselves.  And last but not least, a renewed focus on marginalized and vulnerable groups including, women, children, sex workers and sexual minorities. 

According to one delegate, Oscar Mponda, there was an “impressive variety of sessions and quality of information which was very good at renewing commitment and raising awareness of the current issues” to which the other partners wholeheartedly agreed.
 
With a renewed focus some of the commitments stemming from the conference included the following: Commitment to assist in building local capacity for local initiatives;  Carry out advocacy work – at the district level;  Mentor some of the younger organizations so they can reach their potential goals;  Devotion to preventative programmes incorporating some of the lessons learned;  Engage youth as well as other at-risk groups and implement economic empowerment programmes to address some of the susceptibilities.

One of our partners, Maurice Ouedraogo from Ouedraogo from Solidatité et Entraide Mutelle au Sahel (SEMUS) in Burkina Faso, was selected by the conference committee to present the impressive results of a gender and HIV programme jointly implemented with WUSC involving local, religious and community leaders to address cultural norms which put women and girls at risk of contracting HIV.  Congratulations to Mr. Ouedraogo and all staff at SEMUS! Please see the one page fact sheet for more information.


The five partners were accompanied by Fortune Chibamba, WUSC Sector Specialist in Botswana and Stephanie Hoey WUSC Senior Programme Officer in Ottawa, ON.

The participants included:
Christine Kafando from la Maison des Association de Lutte contre le SIDA (MAS) -Burkina Faso;
Tiguiri « Maurice » Ouedraogo from Solidatité et Entraide Mutelle au Sahel (SEMUS) -Burkina Faso;
Azizou Yago from la Réseau des Jeunes de Sissili et du Ziro (RJSZ) -Burkina Faso;
Danny Matong from Botswana Network of AIDS Service Organisations (BONASO) -Botswana;
Oscar Mponda from the Ministry of Education -Malawi.








The southern African delegation exiting the conference grounds.