AIDS in Two Cities

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Country

Canada, Haiti

Region

North America, Caribbean

Programme Summary

Launched on the eve of World AIDS Day (December 1) 2006, this photography-based advocacy initiative is designed to communicate the humanity that people in the so-called "North" and "South" share when it comes to experiences such as living with HIV/AIDS. Panos Canada is a Canadian non-governmental organisation (NGO) working on pluralism, media, human security, international justice, and peacebuilding. Working in collaboration with Panos Caribbean and AIDS Vancouver, Panos Canada commissioned a series of photos in two cities - Port au Prince, Haiti and Vancouver, Canada - as part of this effort to challenge the "North-South" paradigm for viewing development, and to sketch, instead, a "commonalities" lens that illustrates the shared human impacts of, and community responses to, HIV/AIDS in seemingly antithetical environments.

Communication Strategies

"AIDS in Two Cities" draws on the medium of photography to spark public dialogue, and generate understanding, about what we all share (no matter whether we are living in an industrialised or developing nation) when it comes to HIV/AIDS. Posted online, the Panos-Canada-commissioned photo-analysis by artist Pieter de Vos is an designed to show that - "[a]s useful as it has been for development and social justice movements, the North-South lens is now dangerously misleading, because it is state-based not people-based....Seen through the commonalities lens, AIDS looks remarkably similar in one of the richest and in one of the poorest cities in the world." The photographs of individuals in both Haiti and Canada are meant to communicate such facts as this: the anti-retroviral drugs that can keep HIV-positive people alive are readily available to the wealthy, but not to the economically poor. Organisers acknowledge that Haiti has a far greater proportion of people who are living in absolute poverty than does Canada, but explain that - while their numbers differ - their situations do not. The photographs available for viewing here are meant to illustrate this.