Season’s Greetings! Year in Review and a Letter of Thanks from UNAIDS

Dearest Friends,

My warmest greetings on behalf of UNAIDS.

2023 was a year of great challenges. As always, your friendship and leadership served to inspire all of us at UNAIDS. For that I am truly grateful.

Despite the many crises facing the world – from wars to climate disasters to a mounting global anti-rights movement to an increasing gap between the world’s rich and poor – I close the year hopeful. I am hopeful because of the many community leaders, activists, advocates, government officials, and donors I met throughout the year, whose expertise and passion remind me that the struggle for a more just world is in very good hands. Together, we continued to advocate for deep structural shifts in the way the world is governed, to protect what is truly precious in this world: our climate, our health, and our children.

We are but a few short years away from 2030, the year by which the world has committed to end AIDS as a public health threat. We can have a world in which, instead of losing a life to AIDS every minute, all who need treatment can access it. A world where new infections would be rare, instead of the 1.3 million new infections last year. A world where no one is discriminated against.

To ensure justice, human rights, and dignity for all will take a radical restructuring of the global health system: a rethinking of international debt; a re-envisioning of how medical technologies are produced, priced, and distributed; and a recommitment to working together as a global community. I made a call for such changes at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January and delivered this message in meetings throughout the year and in guest articles for the G7 and G20 publications.

The Path to End AIDS

Together with partners and friends, UNAIDS launched several important initiatives in 2023, including two reports: the Triple Dividend, with Economist Impact, at the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings; and our annual Global AIDS Update, which makes it clear why reducing inequalities is the path to end AIDS.

We launched the Global Council on Inequality, AIDS and Pandemics hosted by Brazil’s Minister of Health Ms Nisia Trindade with co-chairs Sir Michael Marmot, H.E. First Lady of Namibia Monica Geingos, and Nobel Prize laureate, Professor Joseph Stiglitz. The inequality lens is a powerful tool for us to understand and fight AIDS and other pandemics. This work is about claiming rights and equality, so everyone has access to the services they need.

Together with our friends at Oxfam, Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, and Development Finance International, we launched the Call to Action to Save SDG10 on ending inequalities, along with the governments of Namibia, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Maldives, and Colombia.

Rising and extreme inequality prevents us from ending AIDS. I saw this on many of my community visits this year: a youth project in Ceilandia, Brazil, where young people spoke of the inequalities they face and their strategies to overcome them. In Kenya, where Hoymas Clinic offers services and a safe space to LGBTQ Kenyans and refugees.

Again in Kenya, where young women and adolescent girls in Kajiado county talked of the barriers they face in accessing services. And at Mbangala Rangi Tatu Hospital in Dar-Es-Salaam, where I met Salome and Sharifa, young women living with HIV who are supporting new mothers in keeping their babies HIV-free.

Another important initiative we launched in 2023, with WHO and UNICEF in the lead, was to address the heartbreaking injustice that children are still being left behind in the AIDS response. The Global Alliance to End AIDS in Children was launched in Tanzania.

This initiative brings together governments, civil society, and communities of women living with HIV, as well as PEPFAR, the Global Fund, EGPAF, Gates Foundation, and the UN to accelerate action towards ending AIDS in children by 2030.

The initiative was welcomed by 12 governments in its first phase . These 12 countries are home to 61% of the total number of children not on treatment globally. We have calculated that if we end AIDS in children in Nigeria, South Africa, and Mozambique, we will have solved half of the world’s problem. And we can do it.

I am grateful to the leaders spearheading these new multisectoral initiatives – and to those who joined us as we re-launched our UNAIDS Ambassador and UNAIDS Champion programmes. The expertise and passion of the First Lady of Botswana H.E. Neo Jane Masisi, the First Lady of Sierra Leone H.E. Fatima Maada Bio, Lord Fowler of the UK, and the Second Lady of South Africa H.E. Humile Mashatile will considerably strengthen our efforts to end AIDS.

Women and People of African Descent in the Lead

Every year, Colombia marks Afro-Descendant Women’s Day (July 25) to promote public policies that defend the rights and dignity of women of African descent and make it possible to fight against prejudice, racial injustice, and discrimination.

I was honoured to be invited by H.E. Vice President Francia Márquez to join her and many inspiring sisters of African descent for a celebration of our struggles and our triumphs at an event in Bogotá also attended by President Gustavo Petro. I spoke of the inequalities facing women of African descent and indigenous women that impede their access to HIV services and health technologies, and of UNAIDS’ commitment to do all we can to end those inequalities.

The Choice Manifesto is another important feminist initiative that is pushing the world toward people-centered, women-centered, and women-led approaches to HIV prevention. I joined its launch in Uganda with strong women leaders in the HIV prevention movement who are making sure that the very real concerns of women are respected when it comes to HIV prevention policies and initiatives.

With such high rates of HIV infection among young women in sub-Saharan Africa, the success of programmes like the Choice Manifesto are crucial to ending AIDS.

As is ending racism.

I am extremely grateful that H.E. President Nana Akufo-Addo, whose country, Ghana, has been a leader in fighting racism and colonization, hosted a United Nations Senior Africans Group meeting on eliminating racism and discrimination against people of African descent. It was a powerful reminder of the impact that racism has on the AIDS response and to hear from many inspiring leaders on the frontlines.

With such inspiring advocates, I am confident that justice will prevail.

20 Years of PEPFAR

We will only end AIDS if one of our most important partners, PEPFAR, is reauthorized. PEPFAR celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2023. To mark this incredible milestone, I wrote a letter to the American people.

At the Bush Institute’s “PEPFAR at Twenty” event, I was able to thank President George Bush personally for this bipartisan initiative that has saved countless lives in Africa, pushed back the AIDS pandemic, and advanced economic development and stability.

I renewed my call for PEPFAR reauthorization in a livestreamed fireside chat with Chelsea Clinton in September. But, as we close the year, PEPFAR’s future remains uncertain. In 2024, we will double down on our efforts to get PEPFAR reauthorized.

I saw first-hand the lifesaving work of PEPFAR when, together with my brother Ambassador Nkengasong, we visited the Health Center Primeiro de Maio in Mozambique. It is funded by PEPFAR and the Global Fund to provide care and treatment services to 19,000 people living with HIV every year. We met with Mentor Mothers, my heroes, who link pregnant women to health services alongside health workers, male champions, faith leaders, and community members.

New Country Visits, Awards, and Honours

In 2023, I was fortunate to visit several countries for the first time in my role at UNAIDS: Azerbaijan, Brazil, Cameroon, and Colombia. I left each country motivated and re-energized by the commitment and passion of so many in our global movement. This is how I felt, too, at the awards ceremonies I humbly attended on behalf of UNAIDS. These honours – the Amsterdam Dinner Award; the IWFSA Hall of Femme Award – gave me the opportunity to meet more inspiring leaders and to address the path that will lead us to the day we can celebrate the end of AIDS. I was deeply moved to receive the Most Outspoken Ally Award from Global Black Gay Men Connect – which I accepted on behalf of all the UNAIDS teams around the globe who have been smart, sensitive, brave, collaborative, swift, and agile in responding to the backlash on human rights.

World AIDS Day

In this year’s World AIDS Day report, we highlighted the role of communities who, from the earliest days of the AIDS pandemic, have always led the way, and without whom we will not finish this last mile. Our friends at STOPAIDS generously hosted the launch of our report “Let Communities Lead” in London.

At ICASA in Zimbabwe, I spoke at the opening, alongside H.E. President Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe and H.E. President Filipe Nyusi of Mozambique. ICASA was a moment for us to gather, take stock on progress towards the 2030 SDG goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat, and consider future directions and sustainability of the response. It brought together so many inspirational leaders of the struggle to end AIDS and I felt the power of the AIDS movement. Other highlights included the opening of the Community Village and a visit to the Women’s Networking Zone. I salute all of the inspiring community and women leaders. You shine the way.

Gratitude

In 2023, together, we celebrated some important wins that are crucial for the AIDS response. More countries repealed discriminatory laws against the LGBTQ community (the Cook Islands and Mauritius, with Venezuela removing its criminalizing military law), which means today two-thirds of countries no longer criminalize consensual same-sex sex; Colombia fought pharmaceutical monopolies with its landmark decision to declare dolutegravir a medicine of public interest, allowing the country to purchase or manufacture affordable generic versions; and the UN adopted with a large majority the African Group resolution for a global convention to transform the international tax system – something that is long overdue.

As we reflect on this year, I write to you with humility and gratitude, for UNAIDS is only able to act with your support and leadership. We at UNAIDS commit to pour everything we can into supporting countries to hit the 2025 targets and achieve the Global AIDS Strategy.

I look forward to a 2024 filled with similar action, activism, and change. Together, I know we can shift the needle.

Together, we will end AIDS.

Wishing you restful holidays with your loved ones, and a happy and healthy New Year!

Warmly,

Winnie

Winnie Byanyima is the Executive Director of UNAIDS and an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.

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