The Caribbean Can Find the Model for Getting to Zero

World AIDS Day provides us with an opportunity to publicly recommit to our pledges and declarations, as well as to the agreed goals and targets intent on accelerating the response to HIV and AIDS. This year we focus on the commitment of getting to Zero discrimination. Nations, the world over, are confronted with stigma and discrimination which present persistent barriers to universal access to treatment; reducing violence against women, girls and children; and to repealing outdated laws which further fan the flames of discrimination, even when they are unenforced.

It is for this reason that I am grateful to the Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP) and UNAIDS, for responding to my request to accelerate the human rights agenda in the Caribbean. The creatively conceived “Justice for All” programme and its strategic implementation through national conversations and a regional consultation will, hopefully, help us to forge an appropriate roadmap around which all partners will rally.

I am most heartened that the Faith Leaders throughout the Caribbean are highlighting the tenets of Justice for All; that our parliamentarians are willing to accelerate legislative action; that youth are highlighting the essentials of human and reproductive rights; and that civil society are drawing attention to the need for supplementing treatment with viable care and support activities. I have great hope that the Caribbean would not only be the first region in the world to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV, but that we also could provide the model through the Justice for All programme of truly getting to Zero Discrimination by 2015.

1 December, 2013

World AIDS Day (2013) Message from

Hon. Dr. Denzil Douglas
Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis &
Chair of the Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP)