Voices from Global Village

Khartini Slamah, or Tini was sitting in the Sex Worker Networking Zone when some people approached her for some informations. She patiently entertained all the questions before she turned to me. Tini is the Board Member of NSWP and this is her second International AIDS Conference. Her first was Toronto and then she missed Mexico. Tini had been actively involve in the sex workers´movement and HIV for more than 2 decades now. „I see the Global Village is more happening now and have more networking zone. I´m happy that the sex workers are now have more visibility, more recognised and their involvement is more significant.“ she told me excitedly. She has always been feeling more comfortable in the Global Village because it is the place where everyone comes to share and strengthen the network. However, it is also important for her that the sex workers will have more meaningful involvement in the conference, i.e more sessions on sex workers.

She regrets that non-delegate visitors are only allowed to come on certain days. „We actually need more people from outside the community. People who do not have enough understanding regarding our movement so we can do more advocacy and education to them. I hope this will change in the future, because that is one of the most effective way to do advocacy. People need to see how well-organised and how smart we are. This is also to reduce prejudice and stigma against sex workers.“

Like many other delegates, Tini expects concrete outcomes from the conference, „This conference is important. I do expect the number of participants will be increased in the future and we will start to see more and more new faces around here. I hope this arena will be good for the community to lobby donors as we know the funding crisis is everywhere. I expect we can find more funding support for our organisation through this conference because as you can see, there are a lot of donor agencies are sending their representatives to attend this conference. Apart from that, I want to see more community representations sit as speakers in the plenary sessions.“

Different to Tini, for Ajay Kumar Uprety, Vienna is his first International AIDS Conference. Ajay is the South Asia Regional Focal Point for GYCA. He was also attending the Youth Pre-Conference on 14^th to 16^th of July. His goals are to network with other organisations that has similar niche, advocating for youth and for the inclusion of more Harm Reduction topics. Coming from the community that has strong drug user background, Ajay found that the discussion on drug use was mainly covering only Europe, „I know that the conference is held in European country, but I guess there´s nothing wrong with having Asian point of view to enrich the discussion.“ His first impression about the overall of the conference was „It´s very scientific. And it is not easy for many community members to understand the language that was used by the scientists in their presentation.“

Ajay expects to bring back some new informations and best practices from the conference to his community in Nepal, „I´m quite happy to see that youth has good visibility in this conference. I think it´s important for people to be aware of the existence of youth.“