Treatment Action Campaign and partner health rights organisation have taken an unprecedented decision to boycott the 25th International Aids Conference, currently under way in Munich, Germany. The organisations say this follows the failure by the International Aids Society to critically engage on pertinent issues affecting them prior to the conference.

Dear Professor Lewin

This letter should be read in line with previous correspondence to the International Aids Society spearheaded by the Health Justice Initiative (and of which the Treatment Action Campaign was a signatory) and with debates held about the value of the conference, and what it achieves, over the past few years.

We write to you as the Treatment Action Campaign's National Council, our organisation's highest decision-making body. The Treatment Action Campaign is a South African membership-based health activist organisation. We advocate for the right to health specifically, and human rights broadly. Our members are overwhelmingly poor people who need the public health system to work, and who are the first to notice when it doesn't. By organising locally, our members demand accountability where the services are actually delivered.

Treatment Action Campaign has almost 8,000 fully paid members in more than 285 active branches, from eight of South Africa's nine provinces. The majority of members are black women living with, and affected by, HIV. The organisation's branches are in rural, peri-urban and urban areas.

This year Treatment Action Campaign and some of our partners took the unprecedented decision to boycott the 25th International Aids Conference, currently under way...