The International AIDS Society (IAS) has announced that San Francisco, California, in partnership with nearby Oakland, will host the 23rd International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2020). This is 30 years after the event was held there at the height of the epidemic in the United States. AIDS 2020 will take place on 6-10 July 2020 and is expected to bring together more than 15,000 participants from around the world. But every major national network of people living with HIV in the U.S., along with other organizations and individuals have released a letter asking IAS to reconsider this decision.
The letter presents the strong opposition to hosting the conference in the U.S. in 2020. “We refuse to stand by while those most affected by HIV within and outside of the U.S. are, at best, excluded and, at worst, put in harm’s way by holding the conference in San Francisco. … Hosting AIDS 2020 in the U.S. flies in the face of ample and undeniable evidence that the Trump administration’s violation of human rights, targeting of vulnerable communities for harm, and exacerbating HIV-related stigma worldwide, coupled with drastic budget cuts, threatens the advancements we have made in the domestic and global epidemics”, they say.
Read more here