World AIDS Day 2025: A Call to Confront Inequality and Transform Global Response

This year’s theme, “Overcoming disruption, transforming the AIDS response,” is not just a slogan—it is an urgent reminder that the world must intensify its commitment, not retreat from it.

As the world marks World AIDS Day, the international community faces a moment of profound uncertainty. Conflicts, humanitarian crises, shrinking global aid budgets, and widening inequalities threaten decades of progress in the fight against HIV. This year’s theme, “Overcoming disruption, transforming the AIDS response,” is not just a slogan—it is an urgent reminder that the world must intensify its commitment, not retreat from it.

Gender Inequality Remains the Deepest Driver of the Epidemic

Despite medical advances, gender inequality continues to fuel the HIV pandemic worldwide. Of the 40.8 million people living with HIV, 53% are women and girls, reflecting structural discrimination that shapes access to information, health services, and economic opportunities.

The crisis is most acute in sub-Saharan Africa, where adolescent girls and young women face disproportionate risks. Girls acquire HIV at six times the rate of boys, driven by:

• Unequal access to sexual and reproductive health services

• Gender-based violence, including intimate partner violence

• Poverty and limited education opportunities

• Early marriage and cultural norms restricting bodily autonomy

• Limited representation in decision-making roles

At the same time, women shoulder most of the global burden of unpaid care work. Mothers, sisters, and grandmothers remain the backbone of home-based care networks, often without compensation, training, or formal support.

Progress at Risk as Global Funding Declines

After two decades of sustained progress in reducing AIDS-related deaths and expanding access to treatment, global momentum is slowing. Funding cuts—particularly in low-income countries—threaten the very programmes that protect women and girls, including:

• Prevention initiatives for adolescent girls

• Community-based testing and treatment

• Psychosocial support services

• Legal programmes addressing discrimination and violence

• Grassroots networks of women living with HIV

Health advocates warn that without immediate reinvestment, the world could see a resurgence in new infections, stalled treatment coverage, and rising mortality in vulnerable communities.

Women Living With HIV Are Leaders—Not Victims

Across the globe, women living with HIV continue to lead movements for equality, accountability, and reform. They serve as educators, policy experts, counsellors, human rights defenders, and caregivers.

Yet too often, these networks operate with minimal resources despite filling critical gaps in national health systems. Recognizing and supporting their leadership is essential to transforming the global response.

“Women living with HIV are advocates and change-makers. Their leadership must be resourced, protected, and centred in decision-making,” UN Women emphasized.

UN Women’s Expanded Support in 2024

Despite global disruptions, UN Women significantly scaled up its HIV-related programmes in 2024. Key achievements include:

• Strengthening the leadership capacity of more than 35,000 women across 36 countries

• Expanding community-based HIV services across Africa and Central Asia

• Supporting legal empowerment initiatives that help women claim health and human rights

• Partnering with grassroots organizations to reduce stigma and improve access to treatment

These actions reflect a broader global consensus that women’s rights, leadership, and autonomy must lie at the heart of the AIDS response.

Renewed Commitments Under the Beijing+30 Agenda

The Beijing+30 Political Declaration, endorsed by governments worldwide, reaffirms that women’s health is a core pillar of the Beijing Platform for Action. The declaration commits countries to:

• Advance universal access to sexual and reproductive health

• Expand HIV prevention and treatment services for all women and girls

• Eliminate violence and discrimination

• Address structural inequalities that heighten HIV vulnerability

World AIDS Day 2025 marks a key milestone leading toward Beijing+30, reinforcing that global progress on gender equality and AIDS is inseparable.

What the World Must Do Now

The global community stands at a crossroads. To transform the AIDS response, governments, donors, civil society, and the private sector must act on several fronts:

1. Reverse Disinvestment

Sustained and predictable financing—both domestic and international—is essential to maintain health systems, treatment access, and prevention programmes.

2. Centre Gender Equality and Human Rights

Policies must dismantle the social and economic structures that put women and girls at risk.

3. Maintain Political Will

Leaders must continue pushing for universal HIV services, even amid geopolitical and economic pressures.

4. End Violence Against Women and Girls

Gender-based violence is both a cause and a consequence of HIV vulnerability. Ending it is non-negotiable.

5. Strengthen Community Leadership

Networks of women living with HIV must receive long-term funding and institutional recognition.

6. Ensure Universal Treatment Access

Affordable medicines, differentiated service delivery, and youth-friendly clinics are vital.

The Fight Continues—Together

“AIDS is not over—and neither is our fight,” the UN message stresses. The world has the tools to end AIDS as a public health threat, but only if it protects past achievements and accelerates action.

This World AIDS Day, governments, communities, and global institutions are urged to unite behind a simple but vital goal: protect what we have built, and push forward with equity, courage, and commitment.