Does ActionAid promote abstinence from sex?
ActionAid is opposed to health promotion which focuses only on abstinence from sex or seeks only to promote “faithfulness”. We believe that these strategies further deny the rights of women and make women more vulnerable to HIV. Instead, we believe in empowering people to have the full range of choices about their lives by securing their rights. Sex education should ensure that young people have the full information and the power to make their own choices about sexual health. We strongly believe that condoms should be promoted as a vital tool in preventing transmission of HIV.
Is ActionAid a health charity?
ActionAid is not a health charity. We work on HIV alongside a range of development issues from the perspective of poor communities. Recently, we have supported movement for increased treatment access and helped to secure the commitment from the G8 meeting in 2005 to ensure universal access to treatment by 2010. We are now working to ensure that this target is more than words and that all governments put in place the action and policies to make this possible.
What are ActionAid's priorities for HIV and AIDS?
HIV affects poor and excluded communities and increases discrimination and lack of rights. Women’s rights are an overarching strategic priority for ActionAid and our HIV work is closely linked with working to ensure women can realise the rights. Women’s lack of power is one of the key drivers of HIV transmission. In all parts of the world, HIV has particularly affected excluded communities such as commercial sex workers, men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, migrants and transgender people. ActionAid seeks to work with these communities.
Why does ActionAid International work on HIV and AIDS?
As a development organisation, ActionAid International reflects the priorities of poor communities which we work with. HIV is one of the most serious threats to the economic and social development of some of the poorest communities in developing countries. We started work on HIV in 1987, when a group of Ugandan people wanted to start an organisation for people affected by HIV. ActionAid provided support to that organisation and other organisations, especially national and local groups of people living with HIV. Since then ActionAid has develop innovative models of working at community level to empower communities to change the circumstances that make them vulnerable.
How is HIV linked with rights?
ActionAid’s strategy Rights to End Poverty sets out how we work to support poor and excluded people by enabling them to realise their rights. We advocate that people should have a life of dignity in the face of HIV and AIDS. People living with HIV and AIDS are denied many of their basic rights. They are denied right to employment, to safety, to a sexual and family life and to live free from violence. ActionAid supports organisations of people living with HIV to advocate for their rights. We support the principle of the meaningful involvement of people with HIV in the decisions and policies that affect their lives.