Community and Leadership Programme Committee (CLPC) Vision

The AIDS response has given a unique and tremendously valuable legacy of unity and commitment to humanity. In the future, lessons learnt from the AIDS response can be of significant importance to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. For decades, the International AIDS Conference has been the arena where communities unite in a global outcry for our “Rights Here, Right Now!” In this space, on several occasions, the AIDS response has demonstrated that it is possible to turn the tide together and that it is possible to end AIDS as a global threat if we step up the pace.

In AIDS 2016, the Community & Leadership Programme Committee will work for a community-driven conference that takes the principle of greater involvement to the next level, especially among communities living with HIV and AIDS and key populations. It will call for the ambition, the political leadership, and the financial resources necessary to achieve the possible: advancing human rights, dramatically driving down HIV incidence and mortality, and ending the AIDS epidemic. The evidence shows that we have about five years to break the epidemic’s trajectory, or we risk the epidemic springing back even stronger. The leadership role of the community is not just important but crucial to ensure we can translate words into action and engage every actor in the global push to end AIDS.

The CLPC envisions AIDS 2016 as a unique opportunity to transform evidence into impact and to unite the AIDS community to leave no one behind. Today we know that biomedical advances and technology can’t succeed without effective engagement of the communities living with and affected by HIV. Effective and meaningful engagement is the only way to make true impact, to scale up effectiveness and to transform evidence into practice and action.

Our committee strives to ensure that the 21st International AIDS Conference programme grasps the knowledge, strengthens the unity, and proposes solutions through open dialogue in a dynamic structure that allows effective participation of all communities affected by HIV, especially of those living with HIV and disproportionately affected by it.

The leadership of every key partner in the AIDS response is key to achieve our shared objectives therefore this committee will remain alert to make sure that AIDS 2016 is an opportunity to strengthen our common leadership, to take emerging leaders to the next level and to empower the new ones. We’ll work together to make AIDS 2016 a dialogue opportunity for leaders from all sectors, ages and levels.

Scientific Programme Committee (SPC) Vision

1) Advancing Equity
This conference should highlight the great advances that have occurred over the past 16 years since the AIDS conference was last in Africa, in achieving scale-up for HIV prevention, treatment, and care programmes through improved health and community systems and increased attention to human rights and gender equality.  However, it is crucial that we now better understand and address the inequities that currently exist within the HIV prevention and care continuum by developing solutions to ensure that all have access to needed programmes, especially key populations and those who have been left behind in the AIDS response.

2) Catalyzing Optimization
The last 16 years have witnessed the emergence of many new biomedical approaches, including antiviral based HIV prevention strategies, improved HIV treatment options, and scalable and decentralized diagnostic approaches to better monitor the health of those living with HIV. Current priorities include the design and deployment of expanded HIV prevention and treatment tools together with the optimal implementation of integrated biomedical advances with behavioural and structural approaches to achieve optimized effectiveness of comprehensive strategies in order to maximize the benefits of the increased funding for AIDS that was initiated after the first Durban conference.

3) Accelerating Innovation
While much has been achieved since the 2000 conference in Durban, the need for a highly effective preventive HIV vaccine and cure for those living with HIV has never been greater.  This conference must delineate the current state of biomedical, behavioural and social science working to provide a better understanding of the virus, the host immune response, and the potential strategies for achieving and measuring viral eradication.