“Our leadership has never been stronger than it is now” An update on our new Strategic Plan one year on.

One year ago, GNP+ launched “FOR OUR HEALTH AND RIGHTS” its new strategy on the 40th anniversary of the Denver Principles, which stated that people living with and affected by HIV should be at the centre of all HIV response discussions and research and protected from discrimination. A year?on and?still in a season of change, aligning their work with the new strategy, Co-Executive Directors, Sbongile Nkosi and Florence Riako Anam speak about the wins, challenges and where to next.????

Why was your strategy called “for our health and rights?”?

Flo: We are a network of people Living with HIV. At the core of our work is our health and rights. The strategy development plan process was informed by a review with our networks and partners informing what we need to prioritise as we go into the future. The general running theme is the future with communities, and it really anchors that we are thinking about 2031 and beyond and that this strategy is the pathway that leads us there. Will GNP+ be needed in 2031? What will it look like in a world that achieves the Global targets of Ending AIDS as a public health threat? Knowing we the people living with HIV will still be here beyond 2030?

From the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic was the blatant threat to our access to treatment and health services and how the threat of other pandemics or other global health and social issues could quickly diminish prioritising HIV.?

At the beginning of 2022, we also started to see a high-level backlash on rights - the regress of US laws on reproductive rights, then in 2023 numerous attacks on rights for particularly LGBTQ+ people in Uganda among other countries in the region.?We know for sure that the right to heath is significantly impacted by the access to our rights.??

One year in what have been the key wins??

Sbo: Key Win. Stability! After a period of up and down particularly around leadership. In this one year, it has been quite incredible to define how we see success. Part of this is defined around starting to recognise that GNP+ needs to be a stronger network that centres our community of people living with HIV boldly. When we are a stronger network, our advocacy is stronger because in turn we build a stronger movement of our community.?

Another win is the bold leadership decision by the board to have two co-eds - both women and both from Africa - is unprecedented. Their strategic leadership is a great foundation for our service to communities. ?But the biggest win was for GNP+ to fully identify its mandate and begin to work towards it. Some of the hard decisions have been to reflect and be intentional about living our organizations values and principles that largely influence our culture and how we work.?

GNP+ mission is to provide global leadership and advocate for improvements to the quality of life for all people living with HIV. The foundation of GNP+ lies in our community. Our primary role is to ensure that there is greater involvement of people living with HIV in all decision making that matters to their lives.??

What have been the key challenges??

Flo: The implementation of the GNP+ current strategy has necessitated change. Change is hard. Pioneering is harder.?There are certain challenges that come from the fact that we are a community-led network led by two black women from Africa. The dynamic of resistance, scrutiny, delays are hard to miss. They remain an opportunity for learning as are any challenges faced by leaders.???

Where did the brilliant idea for a co-leadership come from??

Sbo: It came from this realisation that feminist leadership means co-leadership. GNP+ liked the idea particularly because it's very progressive.?Seeing how hard it was for the previous leadership, GNP+ thought that it would be great to have a two-leadership model to bounce ideas off each other and share the workload. Shared power is better than having one person decide.??

We began with another co-ed and after they left at the end of 2022, Flo joined in 2023, so the journey has been an experience of learning about leadership but also about ourselves as individuals. We are constantly evolving.?

Sbo previously said that “innovation doesn't come from the same ideas”. Can you please elaborate on this??

Sbo: The world is also continuously changing, and we've made so much progress in the HIV response however there’s still challenges. But if you keep the status quo, there's no innovation. ?

However, being a pioneer means that you need to innovate - but to pioneer means that you must do something that has never been done before. Our communities are continuously innovating because they are the ones who continuously have to deal with issues and find different ways to solve them. ?

We are at a pivot point in the movement because we need to reach Global targets. We are not getting there, we know why. However, we need to start thinking about our world beyond the period set for those targets while our environment is shifting dynamically. At this moment leadership is needed to make some very bold decisions. Flo and I are making ours and they are bold. They keep us up at night, but we are making them anyway. But for us to put them into practice we can't go on like its business as usual. ?

Any time there is change, there must be an understanding that some things will be lost for others to be gained. The sector leaders have boldly said that they want to ‘Let Communities Lead’ and to ‘shift power from the Global North to the Global South”. What do these words mean? What are their intentions and actions? ??

I believe this is the time for leaders – personal or organizations to reflect deeply about what they will need to lose, what spaces they will need to leave and find or rather innovate on the next level to go to so that Communities lead, and power is equitably distributed in the HIV response. At GNP+ we are confronting this reality now. ?

How do you see the strategy contributing towards the HIV response, sustainability and particularly towards the goal of ending AIDS by 2030??

Flo: We are the people living with the virus, directly impacted by the disease. This strategy has been developed to anchor our leadership, participation and engagement in making decisions around HIV sustainability including keeping it on the Global health agenda, securing access to treatment and prevention services for everyone who needs it and ensuring that we are very much motivating investments toward a HIV Cure and vaccine. We are collaborating with networks of people living with HIV at country level as they engage in their country level HIV Sustainability framework development processes, aligning messages, learning from their experience and representing at the same processes in the Global level. We plan to do this through the development of the next Global AIDS strategy and the High-Level Meeting on AIDS in 2026.??

Under the initiative ‘The Future of AIDS Movement” we are organizing together with other global Key Population networks. we are starting on our own to lead the narrative change about HIV and about us as people living with HIV, removing us from this box of vectors of risk. The science is clear now: undetectable equals untransmittable. If someone is on treatment, they are undetectable and they cannot pass the virus to a sexual partner.?

UNAIDS and global leaders are telling us that the HIV response is no longer in an emergency. If we are no longer in an emergency, the narrative needs to shift/ align with the reality. We know from our own experiences of stigma and discrimination that language matters. We are leaders, partners, we are not patients or vectors of risk.?

Where to from here, what is the future for GNP+? ??

Sbo: GNP+ is constantly evolving; into a GNP+ that is energised, a GNP+ ready to lead with communities at the centre. We strive to find more opportunities for the networks we serve to be able to champion their advocacy work in country and nationally. We want to see funds in the hands of our communities, so?we’re building governance and fundraising structures internally?that would allow us to serve and collaborate with our communities better. We want to build strong HIV movements and continue the legacy of the 40 years of the HIV response that had been led by communities such as us. ?