Celebrating #WorldAIDSDay while ignoring the ethnic cleansing supported by our silence and interests insults the history of the HIV movement—a history that taught us to leave no one behind.

SILENCE = DEATH.

Happy December 1st.

#FreePalestine.

On #WorldAIDSDay, we face a horrifying truth: healthcare has become a privilege for fewer people.

Worse, we have normalised the idea that life itself is a privilege for some.

There is nothing “normal” about this.

The genocide of the Palestinian people is razing international law and undermining victories we thought were secure.

How can we advocate for sexual health as a universal right when guarantees of human rights are disintegrating before our eyes?

This is why the silence on the genocide in Palestine from organisations working on HIV is deafening & inexplicable.

Once again, we see arbitrary decisions about who is expendable and who is not.

Which lives matter & which do not.

AIDS has killed over 42 million people.

A genocide with known culprits, resisted by organised queer communities and their rage.

We fought for our lives, dignity, and memory—never walking meekly towards erasure.

Progress on HIV and AIDS was not a gift from enlightened authorities.

It was wrenched from power with despair and rage by organised communities.

Their activism, not institutional generosity, made today’s advances possible.

On #WorldAIDSDay, we honour their lives & stories.

A narrative on HIV that ignores these intersections is yet another operation of exclusion and marginalisation —one that privileges whiteness, maleness, wealth, and “cis-ness.”

It perpetuates the inequalities we fight against.

#WorldAIDSDay

HIV cannot become another identity-based battle to please algorithms, egos, or careers.

Its intersections with discrimination are endless: disability, prison systems, collapsing healthcare, sex work, precarious labour, education gaps, class, gender, and legal inequalities.

Today, on #WorldAIDSDay, we reflect beyond the usual rhetoric.

HIV for us is a gateway—a door that, through fear or empathy, connects us to struggles, injustices, and liberation.

It’s not a space for repeating tired concepts but a lens to sharpen our activism.

The history of AIDS does not tell a story of a “united humanity against an epidemic".

Rather, it reveals the devastation wrought by racism, classism, and homo/bi/transphobia within the most vulnerable communities.

#WorldAIDSDay2024