According to the “Health for the World’s Adolescents” report in 2014 released by the World Health Organization, AIDS is now the second most common cause of death among adolescents aged 10-19 globally. This does not mean that we have to isolate HIV as an issue. The All-In to End Adolescent AIDS Launch Report by UNICEF early this year shows that adolescent girls are disproportionately affected because of gender-based inequality, age-disparate sex, and intimate partner violence.

One year ago, after two years of organizing by civil society, New York State’s Governor Andrew Cuomo committed to end AIDS as an epidemic in the State of New York by 2020. If achieved, this would make New York the first high HIV incidence jurisdiction in the world to end the epidemic.

I am privileged to have been nominated by the Asia-Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW) to represent them on the NGO Delegation as the Asia-Pacific delegate. I am also honored to have Jeffery Acaba of Youth LEAD as my alternate, attending our first-ever PCB meeting.

To ensure the meaningful involvement of key populations and make their voices count in the development of the updated UNAIDS Strategy 2016-2021, UNAIDS conducted a series of consultations coinciding with the Asia-Pacific Intergovernmental Meeting on HIV/AIDS (IGM on HIV) in the last week of January 2015.

The Interagency Task Team on Social Protection Care and Support held the first ever research and policy summit on structural interventions to address social drivers of extreme poverty and inequality and AIDS on January 15 and 16, at the World Bank headquarters in Washington DC.

Patents became part of the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement first in 1995 – called the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. Developed countries had one year to ensure their patent laws were consistent with TRIPS.

On March 27, members of the NGO Delegation joined the UNAIDS Secretariat, cosponsors, and Member States in Geneva as part of a multi-stakeholder consultation to review progress in meeting the goals of the UNAIDS 2011-2015 Strategy.

Serious concerns have been raised relative to the stakeholders’ meeting that was held on 14-15 January 2014 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) capital Kinshasa. The meeting was the final country dialogue to validate the content and priorities of the country’s HIV concept note under the Global Fund’s new funding model (NFM).

The most recent face-to-face meeting on the Inter-Agency Task Team (IATT) on addressing HIV in Humanitarian Emergencies began with the acknowledgement of a major challenge. Both the global development and HIV agendas are undergoing speedy changes at the very same time.

For the NGO report of 2014, the NGO Delegation has chosen the topic of how intellectual property (IP) regulations impact the access to HIV treatment and what role civil society plays in addressing IP barriers to essential treatment.