In April of this year, a vocal minority of governments barred several organizations representing gay men and other men who have sex with men, trans people, sex workers and people who use drugs and from around the world from participating in the United Nations High-level Meeting on HIV. A handful of UN Member States took this a step further by then blocking the inclusion of important language on addressing the epidemic among these key populations in the Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS. Both these occurrences provided yet another reminder for many activists around the world of how little progress has been made in protecting and advancing the legal and human rights of marginalized communities. These events sparked a renewed call from activists demanding that services for key populations be made a top priority of the global AIDS movement, just in time for the International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2016) in Durban, South Africa.
