Vienna, 23 July – Before over 6,000 attendants to the XVIII International AIDS Conference, Patricia Pérez referred to Peace as a great tool to halt the until today unstoppable advance of the pandemic in her closing remarks.

Representing the more than 15,000 members worldwide that make up the International Community for Women Living with HIV/AIDS, Pérez stressed her call for governments from around the world to reallocate resources that are used for weapons, which she called “wrongly spent” to favor Peace before AIDS.

"The women from ICW Global leave this Conference with the certainty of having worked here to gather the will of people in favor of Peace as a concrete possibility that will allow us to stop this terrible pandemic that has wreaked havoc on the poorest sectors of the global society, particularly the young women of the most neglected countries,” said Pérez when she left the main stage where the closing session was held.

AIDS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE – VIENNA 2010

CLOSING SESSION

REMARKS BY PATRICIA PEREZ – ICW GLOBAL CHAIR

This Conference has highlighted advances in connection with microbicides and the relevance of treatment as prevention.

Likewise, it has diagnosed failures that were already identified in previous Conferences.

Throughout this week in beautiful Vienna , the lack of resources allocated to the AIDS sector has been evidenced. The global crisis has increasingly reduced the budgets for health. On this same stage, during the opening session, we heard the voices of social leaders demanding urgent responses to fund the sector.

So… where can we find money to stop the epidemic?

We want to share our proposal:

Let’s look for money to stop the epidemic  among the resources that nations allocate to buying weapons. For instance, US$ 60 billions will be wasted in armaments in Latin America by the end of the year, according to what Oscar Arias, former President of Costa Rica, told us when we asked him to join our global campaign “More Peace, Less AIDS.”

If governments did not mobilize their troops for war training, they would save about 1.4% of their budgets.

These are two of the many examples that we can provide if we want to broaden our outlook and contribute to a more efficient global social response.

This is what our global campaign “More Peace, Less AIDS” aims at.

But, what do we mean when we refer to Peace in the AIDS sector?

We need peace in our homes to prevent domestic violence, we need peace in our communities to prevent stigmatization and discrimination in our neighborhoods, we need peace in our countries to reallocate wrongly spent budgets, and we need peace in the world to prevent occupying armies from raping our women, girls and teenagers as it has happened in Asia and Africa.

Thus, we believe that the more Peace there is, the greater the opportunity we would have created to stop AIDS.

 Finally, we hope that for the next Conference we are able to improve alternatives for the participation of sexually diversed populations,women with disability,  migrating women, indigenous women, drug users, sexual workers, women in prison, girls, teenagers and young women, so that they accompany us to strengthen the motto that guides ICW GLOBAL in all of our actions: “NOTHING FOR US WITHOUT US.”

Thank you!

Patricia Perez

Chair ICW Global

Please circulate.

Silvina Molina

Daniel Barberis

Angeles Alemandi

Maria Mansilla

Press Department

ICW Global

http://www.icwglobal.org/

http://www.morepeacelessaidsnow.org/