Zero HIV Stigma Day 2025 Launch

DECEMBER 13, 2024 (London, UNITED KINGDOM) – Naz is proud to launch the third annual global Zero HIV Stigma Day campaign on July 21, 2025, under the theme “Awareness to Action: Our Path to 2030.”

This campaign calls on individuals, governments, international organisations, and social justice advocates to transform awareness into meaningful, equitable action that eliminates stigma, improves the quality of life for people living with HIV, and accelerates efforts to end all onward HIV transmissions by 2030.

2025 marks just five years until the global goal of ending all new HIV transmissions by 2030, yet stigma remains the greatest obstacle to achieving this. Stigmatising behaviour and discrimination around HIV can include physical abuse, denial of health services, denial or loss of jobs, denial of housing, and arrest where HIV transmission or specific behaviours are criminalised.

According to UNAIDS’ 2024 World AIDS Day Report “Take the Rights Path”, stigma impedes access to HIV prevention, treatment, and care resulting in high mortality rates and poor quality of life. Fear of discrimination or nonconsensual disclosure of HIV status is a key reason that many people don’t seek HIV testing or interrupt their care after starting treatment. When other intersecting stigmas are present such as ethnicity, culture, gender, sexuality, and migration status, poorer health outcomes and mortality rates are exacerbated.

By removing HIV stigma, we create opportunities for equitable healthcare, stronger communities, and the realisation of human rights for all.

A Global Movement

Over the past two years, Zero HIV Stigma Day has grown from grassroots beginnings to a global movement, engaging over 1 million people through our hashtag #ZeroHIVStigmaDay with more people joining each day. 

Established in 2023 to honour the late South African HIV activist Prudence Nobantu Mabele, this campaign is supported by UNAIDS, the US Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on HIV/AIDS, the Elizabth Taylor AIDS Foundation, and the SANAC Civil Society Forum. Zero HIV Stigma Day unites people worldwide to raise awareness and take action to eliminate HIV stigma in all its forms.

Parminder Sekhon, Chief Executive of Naz, says: “We are on a momentous journey to relegate HIV to the history books, yet stigma remains our greatest barrier. This year’s Zero HIV Stigma Day theme, “Awareness to Action: Our Path to 2030”, is a call for global action, urging everyone to stand together in solidarity. Never has there been a disease in the 20th century so stigmatising and pernicious in its impact, nor a health area where those affected have led the fight with uncompromising and relentless determination.

Stigma undermines all the progress we have made, preventing people from living their truth and the best, most unapologetic life they could be living. Stand with us on 21st July.”

Join Us

Follow the campaign on Bluesky, Instagram, and TikTok or visit the website to be kept in the loop on partnership announcements, events, and the release of our 2025 social media toolkit.

Together, we can end HIV stigma and achieve the UNAIDS 2030 goal. It’s time to move from awareness to action and change the way we think about HIV.