The Women’s Networking Zone (WNZ) is a space hosted and convened at the global and AIDS Conferences and other global policy spaces in the Global HIV response. WNZ has been nurtured over time through cross movement collaboration between networks of women living with HIV and other women’s rights groups; it is a vibrant, inclusive, and exciting space where community members, advocates, policy-analysts, decision-makers, service-providers, and researchers share and learn.
WNZ also creates space for community building, safe space, and strategizing. The WNZ promotes dialogue, strengthens existing links and forges new networks, raises the visibility of HIV, champions the leadership of women living with HIV in all their diversity and promotes the global exchange of experiences, abilities, and knowledge.
This year at the AIDS2022 Conference, the WNZ was reinstated after rigorous and concerted advocacy from feminist groups,
networks of women living with HIV and allies to persuade the IAS leadership to reconsider their decision, having rejected two WNZ proposals. ATHENA Network and the International Community of women living with HIV Eastern Africa (ICWEA) will be co-convening the WNZ2022 alongside other partners guiding the process through a global WNZ Planning Committee.
