Winnie Byanyima Wins Global Award For Fighting AIDS and defending gay rights

The executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Winnie Byanyima, has won this year’s Amsterdam Dinner Award for fighting the epidemic disease.

The Dutch foreign affairs ministry on Sunday, June 11, congratulated Byanyima on receiving the award.

“Winnie is one of the true world champions in the fight against AIDS,” the ministry announced in a tweet.

The Amsterdam Dinner Award has been handed out since 2016 to people who are actively involved in the fight against AIDS.

Byanyima a renown gay rights activist and wife to Uganda's opposition politician Kizza Besigye, is also an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and leads its efforts to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030.

She responded to the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs tweet saying she shares the honour with thousands of passionate, fearless activists around the world who daily fight stigma and discrimination and also defend the right to health and life of every human being.

“I share it with my @UNAIDS colleagues,” she tweeted.

The Amsterdam Dinner was initiated in 1992 when the HIV epidemic hit The Netherlands. Since then, it has proven to be one of the most appreciated and impactful dinners in the Netherlands.

Over the years, millions of euros raised worldwide benefited more than 50 projects on various continents, providing thousands of people with life-saving HIV medicines. The Amsterdam Dinner is made possible by donations and the efforts of more than 350 volunteers.

Byanyima is a recipient of several awards, including honorary doctorates from the University of the Free State, South Africa; University of Manchester, United Kingdom; and Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada. She was awarded the 2018 Human Rights and Solidarity among Peoples Prize by the Latin American Council of Social Sciences.  

Her work in advocating for gay rights in Uganda and Africa at large is notable by the west. Recently she condemn President  Museveni’s move of signing the Anti homosexuality bill in to law.

The former Mbarara MP has cited the move as a deliberate effort to violate the rights of Ugandans who are transgender or gay.

Byanyima also said the move will definitely have severe financial implications especially on Aid that comes to Uganda. She says such a law gets in to the way of people accessing life health saving services.

She added that the law undermines the HIV response in Uganda because people living with HIV who also happen to be gay or transgender will be further be discriminated pushing them away from services that could save their lives.