Negligible Minoritist

With the conclusion ofthe 8th ICAAP in Colombo yesterday serious questions need to be raised with regard to the rhetoric of youth participation in conferences of this nature.

It has been said ad nauseum  that youth are our future, we must support youth activity, we must involve youth in decision making but such talk is rarely seen in reality.

The 8th ICAAP was a fantstic opportunity to move past this as unlike in many other spheres HIV/ AIDS has a major impact on young people with 50% of all new infections being between the ages of 15-24.

However, the reality at ICAAP was much different and quite disapponting. It toook some active lobbying on the part of the youth committee on the final day of the conference to ensure that youth had a space to speak at the closing ceremony after being informed that there was no space to hear them at the closing ceremony. There was no space at the opening ceremony either.

There were extremely few youth focused sessions and  even then the panelists can hardly be considered young. Furthermore young people can no longer afford to be the subjects of research without seeing positive action taken based on such research.

The next international AIDS conference in Mexico in 2008 still appears to have no youth committee visible on its website. Despite the fact that young people are the most at risk, conferences of this nature continue to relegate young people to “if we find the space” status. Personally it appears quite clear that any talk of youth participation continues to be purely rhetorical.

While appreciating the willingness to talk about issues facing youth the time has come to move past the talk and see positive action.

So what does this mean for the youth of the 8th ICAAP and what does it mean for youth around the world.

It means that we need to be calling for and holding leaders accountable to the promises made to youth. We need to demand greater funding for youth led initiatives, more significant involvement on panels and most importantly provide real opportunites for youth to attend and participate in conferences of this nature.

It is time we moved past the rhetoric and stepped in to concrete action.