Contact: Libby Mooers | mooers@law.fordham.edu or Steve Eichinger | eichinger@law.fordham.edu

Representatives from Fordham Law's Leitner Center for International Law and Justice recently traveled to Vienna for the XVIII International AIDS Conference, an important global gathering for those working in the field of HIV/AIDS, as well as policy makers, persons living with HIV/AIDS, and other individuals committed to ending the pandemic.       

Participating Leitner Center faculty and staff—including Elisabeth Wickeri, Joy Chia, Paolo Galizzi, and Elizabeth Mooers—organized a training session for 25 community organizations who had been presented with the Red Ribbon Award, an honor celebrating the groups' outstanding leadership in responding to HIV/AIDS. The Leitner Center's training session focused on the ways in which these community organizations could engage international legal mechanisms to protect their rights and promote their causes. For example, Center staff explained how individuals who have had their rights violated might bring a complaint before a treaty-monitoring body or send a submission to a Special Rapporteur.

Paolo Galizzi (right) with Representatives from Novices Aids Intervention and Rehabilitation Network (Thailand).

In addition to the training session, Clinical Associate Professor Galizzi gave a speech on the importance of community leadership at the Red Ribbon Award Gala. He presented a special $15,000 award on the link between MDGs and HIV/AIDS to the Novices Aids Intervention and Rehabilitation Network, an organization of novice Buddhist monks who have been trained as HIV/AIDS peer-educators in Thailand.

Leitner Center Co-Director Tracy Higgins served—alongside notable human rights and public health activists—on the prestigious jury that selected the winning organizations.

The biennial International Aids Conference attracts over 20,000 people, including prominent world leaders, politicians, and businesspeople.