New UN HIV declaration falls short when communities need it most

Less ambition for communities facing crisis

The 2026 Political Declaration should have been a moment for ambition and solidarity and to build on commitments made five years ago. The global HIV response is reeling from the largest fall in development assistance ever recorded, leaving access to HIV services disrupted. These cuts come alongside (and were fuelled by) rising opposition to human rights and gender justice, and at a time of polycrises – from climate change to conflict – that pose real risks for ending AIDS.

The financing gap left by donor cuts is seismic and both our data and UNAIDS estimates show that community-led services are hardest hit.

Governments agreed a declaration that is weaker than the one made five years ago at exactly the moment it needed to be bolder.Eolann Mac Fadden, Senior Advisor on Sustainable Health Systems, Frontline AIDS

At country level, Frontline AIDS partners are working with their governments to increase domestic financing for these vital services, but we are concerned that the declaration exclusively leans on countries to find and to fund their own way through the crisis, without demanding a fair share of financing from donors.

Asking those who have lost the most to simply do more is the wrong response, and risks sliding further towards a new AIDS emergency.

“Governments agreed a declaration that is weaker than the one made five years ago at exactly the moment it needed to be bolder,” says Eolann Mac Fadden, Senior Advisor on Sustainable Health Systems at Frontline AIDS. “We are being asked to hold the response together with less funding, while the countries that cut their support face no accountability. That tells you how fragile this consensus has become, and why communities can never be treated as an afterthought.”

Human rights treated as negotiable

Language in the Political Declaration naming the communities most at risk, and references to human rights, gender and harm reduction remained in the final version, and this marks a win. Yet this happened only because a group of progressive governments, alongside allies like UNAIDS, resisted moves by conservative states to ‘erase’ these communities from the Declaration.

Men who have sex with men, sex workers, transgender people and people who use drugs were at one point cut from the Political Declaration’s targets on stigma, discrimination and punitive laws, a move that would have put the declaration directly at odds with the Global AIDS Strategy.

Throughout the negotiations, civil society warned that putting caveats including “as appropriate” on human rights would allow member states to pick and choose which commitments to action, sending a dangerous signal that rights are up for negotiation rather than universal.

Communities sidelined

Communities are the frontline of the HIV response, yet commitments meant to sustain them were steadily eroded as the text developed. The single remaining paragraph on financing community-led responses was left far weaker than in earlier drafts.

What’s more, in the earliest stages, when the modalities for the High-Level Meeting were under negotiation, there were attempts to exclude communities living with and affected by HIV entirely from the process.

Women living with HIV, communities, key populations, activists, scientists and leaders all played a part in changing the course of this epidemic.Keren Dunaway, International Community of Women Living with HIV

At one stage feminist groups, including those representing women living with HIV, were also removed from the list of partners carried over from previous consultations, leaving them to mount an outsider campaign, structured around a set of feminist non-negotiables for the 2026 HIV High-Level Meeting. Few Member States even turned up to hear the keynote address by Keren Dunaway from the International Community of Women Living with HIV at the opening segment of the HIV High Level meeting.

“People who refused to accept exclusion, stigma and preventable deaths as inevitable,” said Keren speaking at the meeting, “women living with HIV, communities, key populations, activists, scientists and leaders all played a part in changing the course of this epidemic.”

New recognition of the intersections between HIV, climate change and conflict

Drafts of the Political Declaration included paragraphs recognising the impact of crises, including humanitarian emergencies, conflict and climate related disasters, on the HIV response, and a commitment to better integrate HIV with crisis response and emergency preparedness. This is an important step in an era of polycrises. We remain unclear as to whether these commitments made it into the Political Declaration until the final text is published.

Yet even this faced substantial pushback, with some countries claiming that these issues have no relation to HIV and AIDS, despite strong evidence that conflict, climate change and other crises can fuel HIV epidemics.

What needs to happen now?

Frontline AIDS and partners will work hard to drive accountability for the commitments made in this Political Declaration, and in the Global AIDS Strategy.

Alongside this, we have set out a clearer path to ending AIDS in the People’s Declaration on HIV and AIDS – text endorsed by over 300 civil society organisations. Drafted as the response governments should have made, it calls for sustainable funding for the global HIV response, including a fair share from countries with the most to give.

It also calls for key populations, women and girls, and human rights to be named and centred and urges a strong resistance against organised anti-rights movements. It demands that community leadership be funded and institutionalised, including in humanitarian, crisis and emergency preparedness settings.

It was released at the close of the meeting as a direct challenge to governments who have failed to address the needs of people and communities living with and affected by HIV.

In a process where many have sought to exclude their voices, it aims to bring them to the forefront.

Read and endorse the People’s Declaration on HIV and AIDS.