UN’s Winnie Byanyima: ‘When countries criminalise LGBTQ+ people, they slow their progress against HIV’
Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS, speaks to GAY TIMES about bringing the HIV/AIDS epidemic to an end by 2030. WORDS BY CONOR CLARK Governments all over the world have committed to bringing the HIV/AIDS epidemic to an end by 2030, something that would have seemed impossible mere decades ago.
Now, the goal is within reach, but Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), tells GAY TIMES that “work still needs to be done” to make it a reality in the next seven years. “We have 30 million people around the world living with HIV and on treatment, living good lives,” she explains. “But we also have 9.2 million people who we still have to find, who for many reasons, are not accessing treatment.” Byanyima, who is also an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), oversees the global response to HIV/AIDS as part of her work at UNAIDS.
As well as being a vocal advocate of the LGBTQIA+ community, she has fought to remove barriers in accessing HIV treatment and care globally. “We are clear about what we are going for,” she says. “We want to reach zero new infections, we want to go down to zero deaths and we will continue to work hard towards that.” That’s not to say there aren’t several obstacles the world needs to overcome before that can happen.
Byanyima highlights that more than 60 countries still criminalise LGBTQIA+ people, which can result in HIV-positive members of the community not accessing vital treatment due to fears of discrimination and/or harassment.
