Religious activists leave AIDS conference worried about funding but committed to continue efforts

In the last of our items feeding back on the 18th International AIDS Conference, we present the feedback from Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance, who were the official coordinators of the Faith Based Responses to HIV & AIDS represented at the conference.

While faith based organisations (FBOs) and faith community responses to the pandemic seem to have been well represented, well listened to and more integrated into the main programme at this conference than in previous years, there has been a real sense that the tide has turned in turns of international funding commitments, and that we will be ploughing on with our work, doing more with fewer resources than before.

There are also cries for more coordinated responses from faith communities at future conferences and summits on HIV & AIDS so that we can bring our voice ever more clearly to the public debate on AIDS strategy.

So - doing more with less and making ourselves heard better seem to be the main challenges coming from the EAA - from CHAA a recognition that the Western, secular discourse on AIDS is missing the realities on the ground that faith based responses deal with day-to-day, and from ICMDA a question mark over the current, highly individualistic and Western emphasis on a rights based approach to care and prevention.

As Bishop Yvette Flunder, senior pastor of the City of Refuge United Church of Christ in San Francisco said "this work is not for wimps”!