2026 Seminars

At a moment when the humanitarian sector is struggling to meet its own localisation targets and where the HIV movement needs help adapting to operate in heavily disrupted and crisis-affected settings, this workshop provides an important opportunity that allows the two sectors to break siloes and work together.

The world in which we live and operate faces increasingly frequent, ever more extreme inter-related crises – conflict, climate-driven disasters, social upheaval, and human rights violations – often resulting in inaccessible or unavailable health services as these crises unfold.  This polycrisis reality puts more people and communities at risk for HIV, as well as increases the negative impacts and outcomes for people living with HIV amid these crises. In the last few years, these crises have begun to disrupt the hard-won gains of the HIV response and have forced our partners to pivot swiftly to operate in unstable environments, and to respond to immediate needs while still providing HIV services and support.

The HIV movement has spent the last 40 years building the capacity of civil society actors worldwide. Using the networks of trust established by the HIV movement to distribute humanitarian aid allows marginalised populations to access the same humanitarian resources and support as other groups in times of crisis, making humanitarian responses more inclusive and effective, while also ensuring that HIV rates do not increase in times of crisis.

Frontline AIDS partners, including APH and SIDC, are almost always embedded within their communities to provide them with HIV, SRHR, Mental Health, harm reduction, and primary health care services - particularly in the face of stigma and discrimination that is often exacerbated in emergencies and crises for the most vulnerable and marginalised amongst us. Our partners have been developing and leading ‘localisation’ approaches well before it became a cornerstone principle of humanitarian response.

We have found that the trust our partners have established with the communities they have served for years and the resulting community response and resilience systems that they have established enables them to respond quickly and impactfully to crises beyond the scope of HIV. It also ensures they reach the most vulnerable and most marginalised groups and communities during emergencies that other organisations may not have trusted connections with. Frontline AIDS and its partners have unique strengths, distinct comparative advantages, and incredible value-adds that – more than ever – need to be harnessed, adapted, and innovated to respond to crises more effectively and to build stronger resilience in our communities.

Now is the time to “commit to fully integrate HIV responses within emergency preparedness, pandemic preparedness and humanitarian response frameworks, recognizing that conflicts, climate-related disasters, natural disasters, economic shocks and humanitarian crises disproportionately affect people living with, at risk of or affected by HIV, particularly women and girls who may be exposed to sexual violence” (From the High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS concluded on June 23, 2026, with the adoption of the Political Declaration "United to End AIDS by 2030" (Resolution A/RES/80/268). Paragraph 53)

In this workshop session, Frontline AIDS, its partners APH and SIDC, and key allies such as Christian Aid will share experiences of CSO-driven and -led approaches to providing HIV and other support to vulnerable communities during conflicts in Ukraine and Lebanon, while also drawing lessons from other organisations in our partnership. This will include innovations and high-impact successes in digital health (e.g., AI and Telehealth), state-of-the-art mobile health care in emergencies, inline platforms that support the reach to Key Populations during crises; and LGBQTI-inclusive, community-led approaches in emergencies.

We will integrate a Q&A session to encourage and invite audience members to participate, contribute, and ask questions to make this session interactive and about shared learning.