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World MPs highlight unique parliamentary role in AIDS fight

IPU’s Permanent Observer to the UN, Paddy Torsney, delivered the conclusions to the UN High-Level Meeting. ©IPU/Aleksandra Blagojevic

IPU's Permanent Observer to the United Nations, Paddy Torsney, has stressed to the UN’s High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS the essential role of MPs and national parliaments in combating the disease.  Presenting the conclusions of IPU’s parliamentary meeting, she said MPs had emphasized their critical role linking national strategies, communities and individuals.  Ms Torsney said the MPs had highlighted the persistence of stigma and legal discrimination some 35 years after the epidemic started, continuing to form an immense barrier to voluntary testing and treatment.  MPs had stressed their role in fighting stigma and discrimination at the national policy level as well as in their constituencies, she said.  Ms Torsney highlighted the tools developed by IPU and UNAIDS to support MPs and parliaments, including a guide on fast-tracking HIV treatment.  Ms Torsney was a panellist at the parliamentary meeting alongside UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director Jan Beagle, former US Congresswoman Donna Christian-Christensen, Austrian MP Petra Bayr of IPU’s HIV/AIDS advisory group, and  Benin’s Foreign Affairs Minister Aurélien Agbenonci.

The High-Level Meeting, attended by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and General Assembly President Mogens Lykketoft, focused on the importance of accelerating the HIV response over the next five years, setting the world on course to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals.