We Need a Strong Religious Presence at AIDS 2020
One of the key differences between the winning and losing futures involves the religious presence at the 2020 AIDS Conference in San Francisco and Oakland. In the losing future, the religious presence is weak and divided, but in the winning future, the presence is strong and unified. Here is an interchange between two of the panelists in the winning future, looking back from 2030. Dr. Chibuzo Okafor is head of an interfaith relief agency in Nigeria. Ambassador Christopher Rogers was the last head of PEPFAR before it was closed down in 2028 because it was no longer needed.
DR. OKAFOR: Do you remember all the marches we used to have at previous AIDS conferences? It always struck me as odd and disappointing that there was barely any participation by religious leaders. There were never more than a few dozen. There should have been hundreds of them! And they should have been at the front instead of hidden in the back.
AMB. ROGERS: I had that same feeling too, Chibuzo, all the way through the 2018 conference in Amsterdam. It was so disappointing and frustrating. But then, wasn’t it glorious at the San Francisco conference in 2020? Remember there was that summit meeting just before the conference, with some really prominent religious leaders, and then they were the ones that led the march! For me, that march was what marked the transition from religion as a problem to religion as a solution. That’s when religious leaders really became the global conscience that we needed, to make sure we all knew that ending AIDS was a moral imperative.
What would it take to make future leaders like Dr. Okafor and Amb. Rogers look back so positively at AIDS 2020? Here are some possibilities:
A highly visible presence by prominent leaders from diverse religious traditions. There will be many opportunities for such a presence, such as an interfaith prayer service and a march, in addition to conference sessions.
A strong statement of advocacy by prominent religious leaders. The statement would serve as a public reminder that the epidemic is not over and that the world has a moral obligation to end it. The statement would include specific demands about the global response, such as adequate funding and access to HIV services for all, including the marginalized and vulnerable.
A commitment by diverse religious institutions to be strong active partners during what we hope will be the last decade of the HIV and AIDS epidemic. There are several areas where religious institutions are especially important: filling the gaps in HIV services, ensuring that prevention and treatment services are available to all; aggressively addressing AIDS-related stigma, especially within local religious communities; providing support and encouragement to people who are living with HIV; providing a counter-narrative to ensure that PLHIV do not rely exclusively on faith healing; and equipping and empowering young people with knowledge about all options for preventing HIV transmission.
Even better than commitments to action would be commitments to achieving specific results. For example, one target for 2030 could be that at least half of the population in high-burden areas worship regularly at local religious communities that are free of AIDS-related stigma.
If religious leaders and institutions were to make statements and commitments such as these at the 2020 AIDS Conference, then the prospects for ending the epidemic are much higher, and in 2030 we would we able to look back at a remarkable victory over HIV and AIDS. In the words of Dr. Zhang Xiu Ying, the head of the World Health Organization in 2030:
DR. ZHANG: There was that great march at the San Francisco conference in 2020, with all of those prominent religious leaders. I’m not a particularly religious person, but that march was really inspiring. And, for the first time, I really believed that we would be able to deal with the social issues because religion would unquestionably be on our side. Then, a few years later, that belief was confirmed when we started getting data about what so many local faith communities were doing.
That is the future we can create, if we choose to.