On Zero Discrimination Day, 1 March, we celebrate the right of everyone to live a full and productive life with dignity. At UNDP, we work with governments, communities and partners, ensuring that all people can access high quality and inclusive health services.

What does that look like in practice? It begins with access to high quality and non-discriminatory prevention, treatment and care delivered respectfully by community health workers and health care providers who support informed consent and ensure confidentiality. It includes a functional, climate resilient health system and a well-equipped supply chain with the necessary diagnostics, medicines, and vaccines, managed with digital solutions for greater effectiveness and efficiency. 

Yet too often, there is still a gap between the health services that we want and the reality. Stigma towards people living with HIV is pervasive even in health and community settings that should be safe spaces. Research conducted by the International Community of Women Living with HIV reveals that women living with HIV in 23 countries reported experiencing coercion or mistreatment in healthcare settings over the past year.

Key populations—those who are at a higher risk of HIV and who now account for the majority of new infections—also report alarmingly high levels of stigma and discrimination. According to the latest UNAIDS global report, 21 percent of gay men and other men who have sex with men reported stigma and discrimination, as well as 28 percent of sex workers and 35 percent of transgender people and those who inject drugs. This is often fueled by unjust criminalization. As a result, people are afraid to seek healthcare for fear of abuse, legal action, or in some cases, violence and arrest. Regulations and policies can add to the intense discrimination key populations already face from families, education, social systems and sometimes, themselves.

Over four decades of the HIV response we have learned that the path to ending AIDS requires zero discrimination. One way is through enabling laws and policies such as a new law passed in Benin in early February, which affirms the right to non-stigma and non-discrimination, enhances privacy and data protection and upholds access to HIV care and prevention and services for key populations. Importantly, it also recognizes that it is a person’s choice to disclose their HIV status. 

The regulation replaces a harmful 2006 law and is the outcome of over a decade of steady work towards reform in Porto-Novo and Cotonou. UNDP provided technical support to the Benin government as part of a coalition of partners, including the Global Fund and UNAIDS.

Another path towards a future with zero discrimination is through supporting community-led organizations of people living with HIV and key populations, who know how to advocate for and provide the kind of tailored services that can save lives and contribute to resilient societies.

Through its Power of Prevention initiative in southern Africa, UNDP is working with countries, communities and partners in South Africa, Malawi and Zimbabwe to strengthen national efforts to ensure HIV prevention for key populations remains central to policy and financing agendas. Since January 2026, through the Power of Prevention, 22 key population-led organizations are driving change for HIV prevention.

One of the organizations is the Malawi Network of Religious Leaders Living with or Personally Affected by HIV and AIDS which works to 'reduce stigma, silence, denial, discrimination, inaction and misaction' within faith communities. Mobilizing religious leaders living with or personally affected by HIV, the network challenges stereotypes and confronts stigma with informed, compassionate leadership. The South African Network of People Who Use Drugs (SANPUD), is advancing rights-based policies that reduce harm rather than deepen it--ensuring that people who use drugs can access essential services without fear. These two groups, along with 20 others, are leading the way in shaping national policy and financing for HIV prevention with the goal of creating sustainable HIV responses.

This year’s Zero Discrimination Day theme calls on us to put people first--to dismantle harmful laws and policies that impede access to HIV services, cost lives and waste precious resources, to confront stigma everywhere and to invest in the communities that know how to deliver change. 

Zero discrimination is an achievable goal, not an abstract ideal.