"Dear Colleagues and Participants, allow me first to express our deepest gratitude to our host and dear colleague, the mayor of Windhoek, Mr. Shikongo, for the hospitality the city of Windhoek has bestowed upon us since our arrival.

I would like to tell you, Mr. Mayor, that we sincerely appreciate the kindness, spontaneity and graciousness shown by the population of your beautiful and welcoming city.

Your presence, Mr. Representative of Government, honours the Alliance of Mayors and Municipal Leaders on HIV/AIDS in Africa, and gives this opening of the Alliance's second symposium a special meaning. We would like to thank and pay homage to your Government and His Excellency, Mr. President of the Republic, for his willingness not only to permit, but to support, the gathering of the Alliance in this country. We extend our gratitude to the organisers of Africities 2000, in particular the Municipal Development Programme, which spontaneously offered to host the second symposium of the Alliance.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Colleagues, in December 1997, thirty of us, concerned about the dramatic impact and the increasingly visible consequences of the HIV epidemic in our cities and towns, gathered in Abidjan.

Within the framework of Africities 1998, we held a founding assembly, during which we adopted our statutes and elected members to implement our action plan.

With UNDP's decisive and continuous support, we have achieved a number of objectives, demonstrating our commitment and involvement in the response to HIV/AIDS.

We have pondered on the roles that we could assume, as African mayors concerned and preoccupied for the future of our families, workers and youth. Together, we have become aware that the municipal institution allowed us to propose a relevant response to the epidemic. As mayors and municipal leaders, we are close to the residents of our cities, and we know their strengths and weaknesses.

We live their difficulties and share the same realities, and thus, are better able to appreciate their hopes and worries, because they are the same as ours. We must always keep an open ear to their desires and needs, openly expressed in our offices, and in the field, in order to adapt our policies accordingly. We often have opportunities to explore ways to build a hopeful and realistic future, one which encourages personal and collective fulfillment. We can provide guidance and support and together find solutions.

Today, we are attending Africities 2000, and we will examine our two years of existence, and reaffirm that our organisation, the Alliance of Mayors and Municipal Leaders, is determined to respond strongly to the challenges presented by the epidemic to our economies and societies.

Dear Colleagues and participants, allow me to appeal to you: let our membership in the Alliance be a real instrument and a way to share our local experiences, let it be a way to assume our role in the response to the epidemic in our cities and communities. We must support and encourage each other to build locally a multisectoral solidarity network, and show the HIV/AIDS epidemic no mercy.

Now is the time for us to express our most sincere gratitude and to reiterate our thanks to Ms. Mina Mauerstein-Bail, Manager of UNDP's HIV and Development Programme, and her team, for their invaluable contribution to the Alliance. Madam, you have demonstrated your complete commitment with the elaboration of the AMICAALL strategy, to strengthen municipal action on HIV/AIDS. The AMICAALL approach is multisectoral, based on partnerships and communities' participation at national, municipal, community and local levels. AMICAALL seeks to mobilise civil society, public and private sectors, and the participation of people affected by the epidemic.

To effectively achieve such goals, we must, each in our own sphere, mobilise the resources of our cities and communities, and open a budget line for HIV/AIDS. We must also be role models, and mobilise resources at international, national and local levels.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we must act as partners to generate intersectoral synergy to alleviate, and even eliminate, the impact of the HIV epidemic. This is the challenge that we present you with, and all the members of the Alliance of Mayors and Municipal Leaders on HIV/AIDS.

To do so, we must go further and give our organisation the means to achieve its objectives. The Alliance needs to be strengthened. Statutes should be modified to create a permanent secretariat. Resource mobilisation, both internally and externally, must be accompanied by the creation of a Managing Committee for these resources.

I hope that the debates that will take place today better express our will to serve this cause, regardless of personal and national ambitions. The credibility of our Alliance depends on it. I look forward to your commitment and support.

Thank you."