Photo Source: IAS

I’m in Vienna at the International AIDS Conference, an event with 20 000 delegates in attendance from over 185 countries. With pushing boundaries the mantra, sexualized messages intermix with inter-faith celebrations and activist and country leader meetings alongside the policy and scientific debates. In fact, nothing comes off as too surprising or shocking. This is the show for all of it, colours united under common banners - but there’s a general impatience in the air.

The Global Village, the vibrant space for Civil Society and grassroots community networking is the hub of the conference for most attendees. A breath away from the overwhelming 500+ pages of programmes and competing satellite sessions, plenaries, and workshops - the chaos catches on with the roar of international activists feeding off the energy of the space. This culminates in a Human Rights march in the centre of Vienna tonight -  invariably gaining momentum and agitation with the collective disillusionment at the power dynamics behind the research and funding agendas.The Global Village, a microsm highlighting almost every kind of AIDS story, even though just a small fraction have the opportunity to be here. But it’s representative of a million faces, and if the theme this year indicates anything, it’s the Human Rights discourse around HIV/AIDS that is the most relevant call for action.

With this entry-point, I can’t help but wonder where this AIDS Conference is meant to take us. At first glance, the theme this year “Rights Here, Right Now” (which I continued to misread as “Right Here, Right Now”) seems to be a paraphrased reiteration of themes from previous AIDS Conferences. Isn’t this just another way to say Time to Deliver, Toronto’s theme in 2006? Or another closely related version, Universal Action Now at Mexico City’s AIDS 2008. It’s a semantic shift from a previously science-focused agenda, to one that is now about people at the centre. Human Rights activists at the conference would argue this has been the emphasis behind their hard work since before the conference began, and it’s due in large part to this work that this shift happened in the first place. Maybe this conference’s theme signals that the ownership is back in the hands of communities and individuals most active and at the forefront of the fight against AIDS. Or maybe that’s an appeasing way of looking at it.

Despite the hopeful mentions in the opening plenary by Michel Sidibe, the director of UNAIDS and Julio Montaner, the President of the International AIDS Society on the importance of integrating a rights-based, gender equality centred response into all calls for action, this isn’t a celebratory affair. And the tension is evident in the air. With delayed delivery on PEPFAR promises, an increased rate of transmission in Eastern Europe, increasing violence against women, everyone is tired of hearing repeated messages. There are no big mega-breakthroughs, though the media is eager to cling on to whatever they get. And the next big thing seems to be Annie Lennox as the official conference endorser and the Bills duo’s appearances - Gates and Clinton, that is. All here to talk about changing things. Now. Just like they did last time.

The mood in the press room is about finding that gigantic story. They didn’t get the memo that this is certainly not the world of quick fixes. It’s like obsessing over Bill Clinton’t favorite Viennese tart rather than looking at what mechanisms are addressing stigma and marginalisation, in large part fueled by discriminatory structural policies within the context of constricted donor funding and a largely Northern defined research-agenda. So who’s voices do we listen to?

It’s remarkable when stories come out that have true resilience - beyond claims of immediate fixes, and something that may just stand to shake up this town. The Human Rights march will bring some of these to light, showing the authentic version of the conference, Right Now.