Liping is the Youth Campaign Coordinator of World AIDS Campaign and this is her fourth conference so far. She has a cheerful personality and came across very friendly and excited. „I am happy because this year, the youth representation is a lot stronger. We have more voice now and even better, one of youth representative from Indonesia was selected to be the speaker at the Opening Ceremony.“ she said. The youth group is considerable one of the strongest at the moment. They had their own pre-conference activities and managed to bring along 350 young people from all over the world. Held in the Vienna Medical University, the Youth Pre-conference covered issues around treatment, sexuality, human rights and advocacy. This year looks like the discussion among young people also had moving further to marginalised group such as MSM, transgender and sex workers. Around 20% of the scholarship from the organiser had been allocated specifically for young people to ensure their meaningful involvement and visibility at the conference.
However, as a person who had been to many conferences, Liping found that due to many occuring conferences, people are getting what she called ´conference fatigue´. „I see a lot of activists now a little bit hesitant to do frontal advocacy because of many factors. People I have talked to mentioned that the fear of losing their job is one of the main factors. Liping herself prefers to do the advocacy in a more diplomatic way. She mentioned that during the session that discussed the accountability, Global Fund had made a committment to continue supporting youth groups, so had the Deputy of Minister of Health from South Africa. „I will do a follow up on those committments. I have done that before and as long as we keep following it up, we will see the result. We cannot just do one time follow up and expect things to change instantly. It is all a process and we need to monitor it.“ she explained. However, for follow up of the committment from the Deputy of Minister of Health from South Africa, she said, has to be done by the local youth group „I have no authority on that one. What I can do is to empower and encourage young people in South Africa to actively do the follow up by themselves.“
For Liping, delegates who come to a conference should do the next step once they are back in their country. „They have to make sure that there are post conference concrete actions, otherwise this whole thing is just a waste of resources.“ Liping is a bit disappointed that most of the conference are attended by people who are going to the event just for the sake of it. „Attending conference is not a vacation. People should have clear objectives and mission to be at the conference.“
The next person I met was Jennifer Gatsi. She is the Director of Women´s Health Network in Zambia and also the co-chair of Community Program Committee for the conference. This is her second conference, the first one she attended was Toronto in 2006. Jennifer was more concerned about the facility for the people, especially drink, „I did not see any free water station here. Even though the tap water quality is good here, but you cannot expect people to go to the toilet to refill their bottle. And for some people it is not a common practice, so a lot of them was having quite an awkward moment to do so. Toronto had so many water station. So it was good for people who needs to take their medication, because the station was everywhere.“
Another thing that she thinks more to regression rather than progression was the PLHIV Lounge. „It is very nice and spacey but it is very far from the Global Village, while we all know that most of the community members are hanging around the Global Village. It gives the impression that they want to isolate the PLHIV.“ But there are always good things that she could find. She found the registration was very well organised and the process was promptly done. Another thing that she thought was important is the transportation. „Vienna has a very good transportation system. It is very easy to get around the city or to travel from the hotel to the conference venue. I have not heard a single complain about this. I did not attend Mexico conference but I heard a lot of stories regarding the shuttle there. On the opposite, people were happy with the PLHIV Lounge there. So, I guess you cannot please everyone in this regard.“
As a leading activist in her country, Jennifer is very busy during the conference. She is the point person for a session on law reform and at the same time she is also having a lot of speaking sessions,“It has been hectic for me, but I enjoy it. I see most of the session now are interliked to one another and had integrated several groups altogether.“ One thing that she did not find in other conference is that the number of disabled delegates, „Vienna is a city that is very friendly to disabled people. I am happy that they are finally can attend the conference because of the enabling facility here. Their issue is just as important and they are often forgotten.“
As the Co-chair of Community Program Committee, Jennifer is feeling proud to see how things are shaping up, „It is like watching your baby grows.“ There are several things that she thinks needs to be improved which is the effort from the organiser to support the committee members to attend and give decent accommodation to the scholarship recipients. „The committee members are the ones who put things up together. It is not fair that their attendance is not guaranteed by the organiser. They should be prioritised because without them, this conference would not be happening.“
She expects to see some concrete committment from the government of Eastern European countries. Also, she expects that women living with HIV in Austria will be more inspired to start their own movement. „As our local committee member said once, the positive women here are very introvert and full of fear. I hope by attending this conference and seeing a lot of positive people are comfortable with their status, they can slowly follow our path. Also, I hope the government and the society here will start to treat the PLHIV with more respect so they can have more freedom in expressing themselves.“
for Jennifer, going to conferences means networking, get new information, share best practices, share challenges and making new friends. „Of course advocacy is included, but I guess I do not need to mention that because that is what everyone is doing here...“
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