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GMHC Statement on United Nations Blocking Organizations that Represent Transgender People and Drug Users
May 20, 2016 - New York, New York - GMHC released the following statement after a shocking story in The New York Times this week that details the exclusion of 22 nongovernmental organizations from a United Nations global meeting to stop the AIDS epidemic.
The New York Times reported that "Russia, Cameroon, Tanzania, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a 57-nation bloc, objected to the participation of 22 nongovernmental organizations, or N.G.O.s. Their initial list included 39 groups. Lobbying by the president of the General Assembly, Mogens Lykketoft, a Danish diplomat, trimmed it to 22."
STATEMENT BY GMHC CEO KELSEY LOUIE:
By preventing nearly two dozen organizations from participating in the United Nations global meeting to stop the AIDS epidemic, the General Assembly is stifling essential voices from a critical conversation. Blocking groups that work with the lesbian, gay and transgender communities, as well as groups representing drug users, works against the goal of getting to zero new AIDS cases. If we have learned one thing in the past 35 years, it is that we must act together to defeat this epidemic. Gay Men's Health Crisis does not support the discrimination and prejudice behind this decision, and urges the General Assembly to allow all voices into the meeting.
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About Gay Men's Health Crisis
Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) is the nation's leading provider of HIV and AIDS care, prevention services and advocacy, serving nearly 9,000 people living with and affected by HIV and AIDS in New York City, the epidemic's largest U.S. epicenter. As the world's first HIV and AIDS service organization, GMHC is an expert in providing services that every person affected by the epidemic deserves. GMHC is on the front lines caring for people who are both HIV negative and positive, including: testing,
nutrition, legal, mental health and education services. GMHC also advocates for stronger public policies at the local, state and federal level with the goal of ending AIDS as an epidemic in New York State by 2020. Most recently, GMHC and other HIV and AIDS organizations successfully persuaded the federal government to recommend widespread use of PrEP, a new daily treatment that is over 90% effective in preventing HIV infection. For more information, visit www.gmhc.org.
Contact: Anthony Hayes
917-601-0410
anthonyh@gmhc.org
Source: GMHC
"Reproduced with permission - GMHC"
GMHC
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