Asia Pacific leaders warn attacks against health and gender are undoing decades of progress

Gender equality and right to health are fundamental human rights - AND - INDIVISIBLE
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At a recent global meet, a session cut through the usual conference optimism with a stark warning: the global AIDS response is being hit by a coordinated anti-rights and anti-gender backlash at the precise moment when funding is collapsing.

Gender justice, bodily autonomy and the leadership of key populations are not optional add-ons. They are the foundation on which any credible path to ending AIDS rests. With only 54 months left to the 2030 targets, that foundation is cracking.

Fragile progress meets organised resistance

The numbers do look impressive on paper. Since 2010 the world has cut new HIV infections by more than 40% and AIDS-related deaths by 57%. Last year 32 million people were on treatment - a scale once unimaginable. Yet in 2025 alone 1.2 million people were diagnosed with HIV and someone still dies of an HIV-related cause every minute. The hardest remaining work depends entirely on reaching those most at risk. None of those who got diagnosed with HIV should have got infected in the first place given the science, evidence and combination prevention tools we have. Likewise, no one should have died of AIDS.

But we cannot end AIDS unless we recognise the simultaneous assault. Deep cuts in HIV programmes' financing worldwide coincide with an organised, well-funded political campaign that seeks to roll back the very rights that make an effective response possible. These are not separate crises. They compound each other. Money is being withdrawn just as political attacks make community-led services harder to deliver and people harder to reach.

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