As we mark World AIDS Day 2025, under the theme “Overcoming disruption, transforming the AIDS response,” our global community stands at a moment of both possibility and peril. Decades of progress mean the world has the tools and experience to end AIDS as a public health threat. Yet these gains are unfolding amid tightening financing, conflict, climate shocks and widening inequality. Longstanding challenges including chronic underinvestment in prevention, overreliance on external aid, fragmented approaches, and persistent stigma and discrimination also continue to hold us back. Even before recent disruptions, no country was on track to meet the #Triple10Targets by 2025, which aim to end stigma, discrimination, gender-based violence and inequalities, as well as punitive laws that block access to HIV prevention, treatment and care.  New infections are rising in several regions, especially among key populations and their partners.

Yet the story of HIV is, at its core, one about overcoming obstacles. From the earliest days, people living with HIV, communities, health workers and civil society challenged stigma and helped reshape how the world approaches health and rights. That same determination, rooted in equity, inclusion and community leadership, remains our guiding force. This leadership takes many forms. Namibia and Angola have advanced rights-affirming reforms that strengthen the enabling environment for HIV services. In Kazakhstan, government support for community-led organizations is enabling them to reach more people with prevention services and legal support than ever before. In Pakistan, a digital platform co-created with key populations is connecting thousands of people to confidential information, self-testing and care.

A generation ago, antiretroviral therapy reshaped the trajectory of the epidemic. Today, new long-acting HIV prevention tools offer one of the clearest opportunities to end AIDS as a public health threat. The partnership to make generic lenacapavir available for US$40 per year across 120 low- and middle-income countries by 2027 shows how science and solidarity can expand access at scale. To ensure that these innovations deliver their full potential, we must remove the structural barriers that keep people from services and strengthen health systems so that equitable access is possible. Community organizations, including key population networks, must play a central role in their rollout.

For more than three decades, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has addressed the development dimensions that shape the epidemic. This includes strengthening inclusive governance, addressing the inequalities that drive HIV, supporting key populations, and helping countries build resilient and sustainable systems for health. Together with key partners — including the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the World Health Organization (WHO), other UNAIDS Cosponsors, governments, the Global Fund, civil society and communities — we remain committed to ending AIDS as a public health threat. This World AIDS Day, we reaffirm that every life matters, every community has a role to play, and together we can turn disruption into action, and hope into health for all.

Haoliang Xu
Acting Administrator