Each year 18-24th May is celebrated as "Candle Light Day or Global Aids Week of Action and Memorial Day?. The purpose of this day is to bring the world together to join hands to create, a so called ?One Week One Voice?, and bring that voice to mobilize relevant people in the fight against with HIV &AIDS epidemic. On May 22nd 2008, Cambodian Alliance for Combating HIV & AIDS (CACHA), a non-governmental institution, conducted a Candle Light Day or Global Aids Week of Action and Memorial Day Campaign at Women's Agenda for Change (WAC)?s office, with ?Universal Access for People Living with HIV & AIDS in Cambodia? as the main topic. The main purpose of this campaign was to bring together the people living with HIV & AIDS, particularly those who are challenged, people who have not yet received the Universal Access and food insecurity and the important stakeholders to let them talk and discuss about what PLHA is concerned and facing. This campaign also wants to show and alarm the donor agencies as well as the government on the real situation of people living with HIV & AIDS, particular women and children who are directly or indirectly affected by HIV & AIDS and to see how they respond to these issues.
250 participants attended this campaign including; most PLHIV from all over the country, media, the honorable guests from NCHAD, KHANA, NAA, HACC and many others. This campaign is facilitated by Dr. Kem Ley who is the HACC?s Executive Director, Mrs. Dy Many from AAC, and Mrs. Kheng Sophal from PWHO. There are 8 PLHIV who are the representatives of 8 communities and NGOs, from Battambang, Prey Veng, Svay Rieng, Phnom Penh, and Kampot. They spoke about their difficulties in the community they resided and raised their voice as well as their requests. The campaign was mainly supported, both financial and technical by CACHA members including; ActionAid, AUA, WAC, WNU, PWHO, UPWD, CWDCC, VC, CCW, IRD, DCWO, FHFF, UPWD, CONCERN, CARE, INTERNEWS, ESTHER, FAIR, MDM, ADIFE and SAMAKY.
CACHA Background and objectives of the campaign: CACHA was established on April 10, 2006 with an ambitious initiative, aligned to the Asia Pacific People?s Alliance for Combating HIV/AIDS (APPACHA), which is a joint engagement of 18 National and International NGOs with the participation from important stakeholders and activists, such as individuals, HIV-positive people networks, MSM, transgender, sex workers union, trade unions, broadcasters, researchers, medical doctors, parliamentarians and student associations, to become a wider alliance. CACHA was conceived as the catalyst to motivate governments, politicians, policy makers, planners, administrators, implementers and the UN to address the real needs of people living with HIV/AIDS.
Objectives of the campaign:
- To strengthen the law, especially in the practice in order to protect the human rights and fight against violence on women and children.
- To advocate for reaching the universal Access, especially treatment (quality and quantity of ARV and OI), food and nutrition, and effective of health services for PLHIV.
- To propose more resources for prevention, treatment, care and support for PLHIV and the flow of those resources have to be accountability and transparency.
The brief speeches of the guests:
Open speech by Mr. Heng Sambath, the new coming CACHA Coordinator. He started his speech with a brief background of CACHA and general situations of PLHIV in Cambodia. Currently, they are facing a lot of difficulties such as; access to heath services, lack of foods nutrition and so on. (See more detail in the campaign agenda). After his speech, Sreypouv from Positive Women for Hope Organization (PWHO), sang a song related to the people living with HIV & AIDS in Cambodia. The song inspired the participants immensely. Later, 8 PLHIV came up and speaks out about their problems concerning their community.
Speaker 1: a man from DCWO (LNGO working on HIV & AIDS program in Moung Ruessey District, Battambang Province) speaks about the lack of support in the program, especially the children who are affected by HIV & AIDS in Moung Ruesey District. Many of them are living with no parents, some of them living with their neighbors and some with their relatives. Even though they live with difficulty and risk they work very hard for survival. Moreover, they never attend school and if some went to school they were always discriminated by their classmates and their teachers. He mentioned that; ?There was a case of, a windowed woman living with HIV/AIDS who sold a kind of Khmer traditional cookies. She faced the worse kind of discrimination by the local authorities, that finally there was no villager who came to buy her cookies. So, I said to those local authorities that its better to kill her rather than to discriminate her, because it is the same since she could not survive if nobody bought her cookies.? Before he finished his speech, he suggested us to help PLHIV in Moung Ruesey District to access to the Universal Access Scheme, especially the children who don?t have any opportunity to attend the school and as well as no access to food and nutrition.
Speaker 2: a woman working for Self Help Group from Prey Veng Province. She claimed that food insecurity is the main problem in her community. Most of PLHIV living in her community don?t have enough rice to eat including her family. She suggested the NGOs which are working in HIV/AIDS program;
?Do not do business with PLHIV and do not make benefit from us?
Related to CPN+, she also complained that; CPN+ do not partisan because CPN+ does not belong to someone, it is a representative to all PLHIV in Cambodia, thus it belongs to PLHIV and not a group of people.
Speaker 3: a man representating PLHIV living in Checko Community, Phnom Penh and also from UPWD mainly complained on the pull off the foods and nutrition support from his community. While the price of goods, especially the food has risen up, he said that; he really could not afford to buy just rice to eat and he got more trouble when the food support was cut off.
Seriously, we need help and support? he said.
Speaker 4: A woman from Phnom Penh, representative of PWHO said with tears that her handicraft productions that she and her colleagues in PWHO are engaged with have no market and there is no support even from the NGOs who are working in HIV/AIDS filed. She mentioned that; ?Those NGOs which are working in HIV & AIDS program claimed that they really pity PLHIV and they have a commitment to help those people who are living with HIV & AIDS, in reality they just want to help but they never buy any products that PLHIV make. So, what does it mean by saying that.?
Speaker 5: a man from Kompot, complained that the main problem is lack of medicines, especially OI. The inadequate transportation fee is also there. He complained and gave an example that;
?There were 5 medicines that were prescribed but I got two or three types. When I went to get those medicines from the doctor he said that there is insufficient stock and the doctor suggested buying the rest of the medicine from the private pharmacy. While I have nothing to reply beside go back home. Because I have no money to buy the rest of the medicines, so I just used the medicine that I got from the doctors.? This has not happened only to him but also to all the PLHIV in Kompot. Moreover, even this problem appeared since long time ago but nobody responded at all. He finished his speaks by asking for solution for this problem.
