The 2002 Community Forum, held on Sunday 7 July, was intended as a space and time for some of the delegates “to meet, to share, and to continue the process of building a durable global commitment to AIDS.”

In keeping with the sentiments of the Barcelona Framework, “Knowledge and Commitment for Action,” the hosts of the 2002 Community Forum sought to stimulate and encourage community participants from around the globe to share experiences, successes, and challenges in order to share lessons learned, build capacities, and move forward with a reinvigorated passion for action.

Dr Mandeep Dhaliwal, who spoke at the Forum, said that since the first case of HIV/AIDS was reported over 22 years ago, communities had been at the heart of the response to the epidemic.

“Communities have lived with its impact at a most personal level – mobilising ‘social capital’ to catalyse hope, develop skills, influence norms, and deliver essential services and commodities,” she said.

Participants at the Barcelona conference were drawn from the numerous communities created by HIV/AIDS, but were privileged by their access to information and resources, and “privileged by our power,” Dhaliwal said.

“With privilege come a moral imperative, responsibility and more power. It is the moral imperative of each and every one of us to act - to use this power and privilege to find humane and constructive solutions in the response to AIDS. It is up to us, as members of this privileged community, to act – to challenge the pernicious inequities we so tacitly accept, the same pernicious inequities that result in infections and deaths that we could have prevented.”

AIDS 2002 Conference News produced by Health & Development Networks/Key Correspondent Team