AAE wishes you happy winter holidays 2019!

E-NEWS AIDS ACTION EUROPE - DECEMBER 2019

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Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We would like to thank you for your continious support of our work in this year and would like to wish you happy upcoming holidays, and a wonderful 2020!

With this newsletter we would like to take the opportunity to share with you important moments from our work in 2019.

This year we focused on the message that living with HIV isn't a crime, while people living with HIV are still criminalized all over the world. Criminalisation of HIV non-disclosure, exposure and transmission is a growing phenomenon in our region that has direct and deep impact on human rights. In our 2019's Member and Partner Meeting, we all agreed that up‐to‐date scientific evidence in criminal cases has the potential to limit unjust prosecutions and convictions.

Therefore, we wish you all the juridical and sciencifical power you need to denounce and challenge with us the criminalisation and discrimination of key populations affected and living with HIV.

We are looking forward to working with you in the next year!
Best wishes,

AIDS Action Europe Steering Committee and the Executive Office

NEWS FROM AAE's STEERING COMMITTEE

We would like to thank to our Steering Committee members, Marianela Kloka and Yaroslav Bliakharskyi, whose terms end in the end of the year.

Thank you for all your support and active engagement!

Criminalisation of HIV non-disclosure, exposure and transmission – one could think that this is not an issue anymore. The contrary is true: It is a growing phenomenon in our region that has direct and deep impact on human rights.This is why the AIDS Action Europe Steering Committee took this topic up in its 2019 Member and Partner Meeting in October and combine it with partner notification and the impact criminalisation has on partner notification. Read about it here.

Access to and affordability of medication and diagnostics is one of the core thematic areas for AAE. With this statemtent we explained our concerns with regards to the current trends and developments that influence prices and affordability of prevention, medical treatment and care, which are some of the major barriers to universal access to lifesaving medicines for HIV, viral hepatitis, TB and other related diseases.

AAE salutes the communities that have been at the core and the forefront of the HIV response since the very beginning. Without the efforts of communities of PLWHIV, gay men and other MSM, sex workers, drug users, migrants and other mobile populations, women and young people affected by HIV, the global HIV-response would not be remotely there where it is now.

The AAE Steering Committiee has identified six core thematic areas that shape our work for 2018-2021. Below you will find the highlights of our work within each core thematic area in 2019. If you want to learn more about our scope of work for the period of 2018-2021, read our Strategic Framework which you can find here.

1. Community based volunary counselling and testing

As part of our core thematic area on CBVCT, AIDS Action Europe actively collaborates with the COBATEST Network which is a network of the community based testing sites.
In order to improve work of the Cobatest Network, the Steering Committee was established for the transitioning period to put together the governance structure of the Network. The current SC will work on this task till 2021 where the next SC will be elected by the members of the network.

2. Affordability and accessibility to medication

As part of the core thematic area on affordability, AIDS Action Europe in 2019 organised two webinars:

Global Intellectual Property Regimes and Schemes
Community and Civil society work in pricing and affordability of medication in Eastern Europe and Central Asia which will be conducted again in early January. Date will be announced soon.

3. Tackling legal barriers in the response to HIV, TB and hepatitis and 4. Criminalisation of HIV non-disclosure, exposure and transmission

Within the framework of these two core thematic areas the European HIV Legal Forum, a project of AIDS Action Europe, worked on monitoring and benchmarking legislation relevant to HIV and co-infections in order to advocate for policy changes in two projects:

One of the projects is on HIV-criminalisation will also contribute to the work of HIV Justice Worldwide, where AIDS Action Europe is part of the Steering Committee.
The other project is on access to HIV and co-infection services for people in prison and other closed settings.

Stay tuned for the final findings report of both projects that will be published in early 2020!

Learn more about previous rounds of the European HIV Legal Forum here.

5. Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR)

After publishing the "Implementation Guide on Quality Improvement tools of Quality Action: HIV combination prevention and chemsex interventions" last year in December, we successfully conceptualised and conducted two webinars as part of AAE´s capacity building in the filed of SRHR. Those are available online: Webinar on Quality Improvement on Combination Prevention Interventions and Webinar Quality Improvement on Chemsex Interventions .
In July, we brought altogether 13 representatives of 12 member and partner organisations for a taining on selection and usage of the Quality Action Tools: to improve and measure quality and impact of their interventions. The participants were from twelve different WHO European region countries: Cyprus, England, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Germany. Ten of them have signed a contract with us on the implementation on one of the QA tools. In the beginning of the next year we will bring toghether their experiances and share it in one of our deliverables.

Learn more about SRHR here.

6. Tackling stigma and discimination

This core thematic area is reflected as a cross sectional theme in all our projects, advocacy activities and communication.

The European AIDS Action Network was established in 2004, has continued to develop and has become one of the largest networks working in the field of HIV infection in the region. The network goes far beyond the borders of the European Union and covers all 53 countries in Europe and Central Asia.
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