Our advocacy is built on the understanding that, even if we were to find a cure for AIDS tomorrow, endemic inequalities and injustices would continue to provide fertile ground for the next epidemic to flourish.
AIDS-Free World was founded in 2007 by Paula Donovan and Stephen Lewis, both of whom worked for years within the United Nations system. They were frustrated that HIV—a weak little virus—was able to decimate countries and communities, preying upon people living at the margins: women and girls, men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, transgender people, and persons with disabilities.
They established AIDS-Free World to tackle the prejudice, bigotry, ineptitude, and indifference that allowed HIV to become a global plague, with an emphasis on rectifying the misguided institutional responses that have exacerbated the crisis.
We know that, while international institutions can represent the best of our humanity, they are also man-made. We understand that institutions created to expose and address social injustices often do not practice what they preach, falling prey to glaring double standards and catastrophic failures of leadership.
In all of our work, we focus on the very top—on those in positions of power and influence, on those who reinforce discriminatory practices and unjust laws. Using creative legal approaches and high-level advocacy, we demand that the world’s powerful institutions practice the standards they set.
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What We Do
As our name indicates, we are not incrementalists. We work towards an AIDS-Free World by tackling patriarchy, discrimination, and structural injustice.
In 2015, AIDS-Free World launched the Code Blue Campaign, dedicated to ending structural impunity for sexual abuse committed by UN personnel. In its messages to the world, the UN urges the eradication of discrimination and sexual violence against women—root causes of the AIDS epidemic—yet it fails egregiously to act in the best interests of women who have been sexually victimized by those working “under the UN flag.” Code Blue advocates for an end to this appalling and unsustainable double standard.
Our Child Marriage is Child Labour campaign is committed to impelling the International Labour
Organisation (ILO) to recognize girls who are forced into illegal marriage as child labourers. Child “marriage” puts girls in jeopardy, violates their rights as children, and distorts the rest of their lives. The Child Marriage is Child Labour campaign advocates for the recognition of these illegal “marriages" as an intolerable and inhumane labour violation faced by millions of girls around the world.
Our ongoing civil lawsuit against former Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh—who infamously conscripted Gambians to undergo his bogus HIV treatment programme with little protest from the international community—serves as a warning to institutions and governments to never again fall silent in the face of such dangerous and harmful behavior.
Our petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights challenging Jamaica’s 19th century anti-sodomy statute shines a spotlight on unjust laws that exacerbate the HIV crisis in the Caribbean.
Our advocacy for rape victims in Zimbabwe has resulted in groundbreaking work on the plague of politically-motivated sexual violence.
And our self-interviewing app known as CAVIA will record insights, stories, and testimonials in complete privacy, without the need for literacy or technological proficiency, and in areas with unstable electricity and internet access. This innovative approach will allow people to discuss the most sensitive and taboo issues affecting women and girls—including sexual abuse and HIV—enabling decision-makers to design solutions based on a more nuanced understanding of the crises.
Legal and Gender Associate Saramba Kandeh speaks with women in Sierra Leone about their experiences living among UN peacekeeping personnel.