IAS 2025: “We will not be erased” – a community Call to Action

Simon Collins, HIV i-Base

This year the strongest messages from the opening of the IAS conference came from came from community delegates who took to the stage in protest to say clearly with pride and anger: “we will not be erased”. [1]

These activists expressed their collective rage over the lack of a crisis response from governments to the withdrawal of international HIV funding since January or from many international organisations who stayed silent (though not IAS who immediately spoke out).

This has included the overnight closure of thousands of health clinics developed by and for key populations over decades. These clinics had provided HIV and other health care for people at the highest risk. They provided care to people who could never trust government clinics due to stigma and criminalisation of HIV, so trying to direct people now to government services risks not just their health but also their lives.

These activist statements spoke to the shame of scientists and politicians who have changed language and erased communities from funding, healthcare and documentation in the AIDS response.

Especially recent attempts to erase transgender and non-binary people.

We include their short speeches below as a community Call to Action, to complement the one issued to world leaders from leading researchers and scientists earlier in the week. [2]

Amandla – Awethu

“We are sick and tired of the lies from our leaders about our right to life, our right to healthcare and our right to science-based prevention. Our rights to love who we please.

We are on the precipice of a revolution in HIV prevention but instead of ambition and leadership we get nothing.

We have lived with the violence of the US funding cuts from Trump for six months. No services […] and surviving on 10% of our salaries. What do we get? We take action at this moment because this is our lives that we are talking about and the scientists and the researchers know there will be no science without us.

When our leaders talk about integration, and you nod and say it’s okay, what do they mean really? Such hypocrisy. They say we should go to outpatient clinics [at main hospitals] when they know the mobile clinics exist because of the government criminalisation of our lives.

What does it even mean when they say that “we will only be providing PrEP for pregnant and breastfeeding women”. Are you about to extend on your apartheid? Are you about to divide, rule and conquer in the same household?

Integration means nothing? It just means us being shoved into overburdened healthcare systems neglected by the ministers of health for decades, crippled by external debt, only to be ridiculed for our HIV status, our gender identity and our sexual orientation.

Integration is not the solution. Let us be honest. Without decriminalisation, the accountability, the funding – integration will be the death sentence to us. Many organisations in this room, I want you to introspect. We saw you removing TRANS here. We saw you removing INTEGRATION there. We saw you sell us out for funding. My question is this: did Trump give you the funding? No! They will sell us out by day – you watch. And by night they will sell you out. Such a shame.

So today, we rise with one voice to say that equality means nothing is people living with HIV and key populations are left behind. We hear the promises “leave no-one behind”. But where are the key populations? Where are the communities of people living with HIV? When funding is being allocated, policies are drafted and programmes are being designed. Why is criminalisation increasing among our countries, especially in African countries when we know we cannot end AIDS without realising our rights?

We are outraged that Trump’s HIV funding cuts have not resulted in a crisis response. Our governments have their heads in the sand and we are suffering as a result. Today we say “no more”.

We are not invisible. We are not just statistics. We are real people with real needs. Equality is not achieved through empty slogans, it must be lived, practised and defended in every policy, budget and programme. No more exclusion. No more tokenism. If we are not at the table, your talk of equality is a lie. Nothing for us without us.”

We will not be erased.

How dare you, because of foreign investments, how dare you try to change us. You will not erase us. We are planning, we are costed, and we’re investing in ourselves and we will challenge you. If any one of us dies of AIDS we place the blame on you.

It is on every single one of you in this room: doctors, nurses, researchers, governments – if you try to take our names out of your documentation for funding, we will hold you accountable.

Let me say one more time: gay men, transgender people, TRANSGENDER PEOPLE, TRANSGENDER PEOPLE, because trans lives matter.

• There are transgender people in Africa.
• There are trans people in Rwanda.
• There are trans people everywhere.

Trans people also need HIV care. Their rights also matter. You will not erase them because Trump told you to. You will not erase them from the AIDS response.”

WE WILL NOT BE ERASED.

Reference

1. AIDS 2025. 13 to 17 July 2025. Opening ceremony. (Activist response at about 26 minutes). Link may need registration.
   https://conference.ias2025.org/media-1107-opening-session
2. Kigali Call to Action: sign-on for IAS 2025 conference.
   https://i-base.info/htb/51418