Student Stop Aids Campaign Co-ordinator, Saorise Fitzpatrick, calls on campaigners to to take Focker’s Dad style selfies to remind the G7 this weekend that the world is #StillWatching their commitment to take action on access to medicines.
This weekend may be the beginning of our first summer heatwave but it also marks the 41st G7 summit.
Although this meeting of the seven most powerful nations (and the decisions that come out of it) is exciting in itself, this year’s meeting is also important for another reason. It is now 10 years since the G8 meeting at Gleneagles which was the first time governments committed to achieving UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO HIV TREATMENT FOR ALL.
And although we’ve come a long way since 2005 when only 1.3 million people were accessing treatment to 13 million people in 2014, there are still 22 million not accessing ARVs… so we’ve still got a way to go before this commitment is fulfilled.
In 2005, Student Stop AIDS Campaigners told G8 leaders that the ‘WORLD IS WATCHING’ (with lots of eyeballs) and we want to send a message to say that WE ARE STILL WATCHING.
We want you to help us THIS Sunday 7th and Monday 8th June by getting on to your social networks and:
- Take a selfie of yourself holding your fingers up to your eyes like Focker’s Dad does at the top of this post
- Use the #StillWatching and #G7 hashtags
- Tag @StudentStopAidsCampaign and other important people like @DavidCameron
We want to take this opportunity to let our world leaders know that the promise they made has not been fulfilled and we will continue to WATCH them and take action until they do. We hope you can join us this weekend!
This post was originally featured on the Student Stop Aids Campaign blog here.
