A Moment of Breakthrough: Annual Report 2020-2021

In last year’s letter, we touched on the COVID-19 pandemic, then just bursting into our collective consciousness. A year later, much of the world is deep in another brutal wave, an outcome predicted by public health experts, and one that could and should have been prevented had political decision-makers been willing to act sooner and take human rights seriously.

This only underscores the lessons to be learned, many of them first imparted by the HIV pandemic, but too often ignored. COVID has demonstrated yet again that public health is fundamentally connected to human rights and that failing to respect and protect rights — and, especially, to take positive measures to fulfill rights — leads to more infection, illness, and death. Although COVID differs from HIV in important ways, they both travel along the fault lines of social inequities. The only way we will overcome both pandemics is if we act to respect, protect, and fulfill human rights.