Iwatutu Joyce Adewole, African Girl Child Development and Support Initiative, Incoming Delegate - NGO Africa

African Girl Child Development and Support Initiative is a community-based organization founded in 2015 in Nigeria focused on Sexual and reproductive health and rights of adolescent girls and young women. The organization carries out research and advocacy to influence policies and programs that address the linkage between HIV/AIDS, reproductive health, and sexual and gender-based violence. AGCDSI is a member of the SHEWE coalition under the guidance of International Community of Women Living with HIV (West Africa Region) to advance and bridge SRHR information gaps of adolescent girls and young women living with HIV.

Iwatutu Joyce Adewole is dedicated to creating safe communities for women and girls through policy advocacy, information dissemination and community building. She works with youth-led organizations to design and implement responsive sexual and reproductive health programs and the evidence-based strategy around HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB interventions and support implementation of the strategy for mainstreaming gender and social inclusion and a human rights approach in programme activities. She is the Partnership & Resource Mobilization working group Lead for The PACT, a coalition of youth-led and youth-serving organizations working within the sexual and reproductive health and HIV movement.

Charan Sharma, The Indian Drug Users Forum (IDUF), Incoming Delegate - NGO Asia and the Pacific

Maureen Owino, The Committee for Accessible AIDS Treatment (CAAT), Incoming Delegate - NGO North America

The Committee for Accessible AIDS Treatment (CAAT) is a coalition of affected individuals and organizations from the legal, health, settlement and HIV/AIDS sectors committed to promoting the health and wellbeing of people living with HIV who are facing access barriers related to their status using the tools of education, training, research, service coordination and advocacy. Founded in 1999 CAAT’s vision is to have healthy urban community in which all individuals living with HIV have the information and tools they need to access health, social and legal services that are welcoming, inclusive, and respectful regardless of their immigration status. CAAT works to advance the health of affected communities through collective empowerment efforts that engage with diverse partners to build a more compassionate and caring society for all. They work collaboratively with and support the work of local, provincial, national and global networks through a variety of initiatives.

Maureen Owino is the Director of Committee for Accessible AIDS Treatment (CAAT) a position she has held since 2007 Maureen's commitments to Ontario's community of people living with HIV are unparalleled, and many in Ontario benefit from her vision, leadership, and contributions. Her experience as a racialized woman and an emerging academic in her field have deepened our understanding of HIV stigma, anti-Black racism, and health equity. she has been and is an active organizer and advocate for immigrants, refugees, women and youth with HIV/AIDS in Toronto. She has been an active volunteer in many organizations including being a board member of the Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention (Black CAP), Ontario HIV Treatment Network (OHTN), HIV Legal Clinic of Ontario (HALCO) and a steering committee member of the Toronto HIV Network. She is currently a member of the Ontario Advisory Committee on HIV/AIDS (OACHA) and a Community Advisory Committee member for the CIHR Canadian HIV Trials Network (CTN) Maureen is the recipient of the 2017 Ontario AIDS Network’s Caring Hands Award and the 2019 Women’s Health in Women’s Hands Community Health Centre women of resilience awards for resilient leaders. She has a master’s in environmental studies degree from York University is currently a PhD student at York University.

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Delivered by Iwatutu Joyce Adewole, Incoming Africa Delegate, African Girl Child Development and Support Initiative

I speak on my own behalf as a Nigerian young woman and as an incoming PCB NGO Africa Delegate.‘’

I want to speak of a silent killer on my continent. And of global solidarity and shared responsibility. I want to speak of cervical cancer.

Chair, 85% of women with cervical cancer and HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa. 85%! That’s almost half a million new cases in the region every 12 months. Not a total of women living with and dying of cervical cancer, but of new cases.

The HPV vaccine in my region costs about a hundred dollars. Let’s remember the financial gap women face and the many who live below one dollar a day. In the global north, over 90% of girls who need the HPV vaccine are receiving it. In my region over 90% of girls who need it are not receiving it. Let’s talk about inequality.

Madam Executive Director, we need not only one People’s vaccine for COVID, but another for universal access of all girls to HPV. Let’s talk about global solidarity.

Women living with HIV grapple with multiple vulnerabilities, including cervical cancer. Treatment is unaffordable for them, transport is unaffordable, machines in health facilities don’t work.

Yet, despite all these inequities, we have eliminated other conditions such as polio. We want the same efforts to be put into HPV. We need to strive to eliminate HPV and cervical cancer. I ask that the Joint Programme shares the responsibility to create new ways of meeting our health needs even if this means working with new partners and thinking more broadly in the HIV response to achieve this.

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Delivered by Sasha Volgina, Global Network of People Living w/ HIV

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Delivered by Jules Kim, Asia and the Pacific, on behalf of the NGO Delegation

I deliver this intervention on behalf of the NGO Delegation.

Cervical cancer is entirely preventable and as we have heard entirely possible to eliminate. With the availability of vaccines and routine screening, there is no need for any individual with a cervix, regardless of their gender or sexuality, including women, girls, trans*, non-binary and intersex people to be affected by or die from cervical cancer. And the concerning reality is that women living with HIV are more susceptible to developing cervical cancer.

Yet the continuing resistance to implementing inclusive and integrated systems of prevention, treatment, knowledge and care around sexual reproductive health and rights and the underlying inequities in our health systems and cultures against women and key populations, create unnecessary barriers to women’s health. This must change.

We can eliminate cervical cancer- but to do so we must stop denying the autonomy of all women and girls and key populations over their own bodies and sexual health. We must stop the delusion that women and girls do not have to informed about sex and sexual health and rights. We must fund the integration of essential care and combination prevention services for cervical cancer and HIV. And we must eliminate the financial, societal and structural barriers, including stigma, discrimination and gender based violence that prevent access to necessary support, services, prevention and care for all women, girls and key populations.

We urge MS to ensure funding and access to combination prevention, care, screening and treatment for cervical cancer for all women, girls, trans*, non binary and intersex people living with and affected by HIV in all our diversity. We can and must act to prevent and eliminate cervical cancer.

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Delivered by Jules Kim, Asia and the Pacific

This statement is delivered on behalf of the NGO Delegation and in support of the statements by Frontline AIDS, AIDS Action Europe, Aidsfonds and the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) and in support of the revised guiding principles and the recommended amendments to DP 13.7 calling on the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS speak with one voice, respecting its guiding principles, and acting to protect, respect and fulfil the human rights of all.

Today is International Day to End Violence against sex workers. It is a day where we commemorate the lives of sex workers lost to violence. There is not a sex worker in the world who’s life has not been touched by violence. And this has been heightened during the COVID pandemic

Today sex workers globally stand collectively to remember

• the violence perpetrated against ourselves and our friends, families and children just because of our occupation
• the systemic barriers that prevent us from accessing essential HIV prevention services, testing, treatment, support and care

Today we remember other sex workers no longer with us and we stop the silencing of us by the systems that take advantage of the stigma and discrimination that invisibilises us and ignores our agency, voices and lived realities.

It is a day when we affirm that sex work is work and recognise that we are a community disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS and the COVID-19 pandemic. This cannot and will not change without the end to the state sanctioned violence against us through the criminalisation of our work. Evidence definitively supports that decriminalisation of sex work will and does reduce HIV rates and risk and is the single intervention that would have the greatest effect on the course of HIV epidemics across all settings for all sex workers regardless of how we ended up in sex work.

So today on International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers we call for the recognition of sex worker rights as an essential step in ending gender-based violence, a key driver of HIV among women and key populations. We demand that the violence against us enacted by the discriminatory laws and policies against us ends and we call on the UNAIDS Joint Programme including its cosponsors not act to perpetuate this violence against us.

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