Racism, an ideology created to justify an economy of slavery, has remained despite the end of slavery and colonialism and must be tackled, Winnie Byanyima has said. The UNAIDS Executive Director was Tuesday speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos during a discussion on the journey towards racial equity.
She said the starting point in tackling racism has to be that those experiencing racism have the space to speak their truth.
“I have no faith in policies driven from the top, that are not led by those experiencing racism themselves,” she said.
Flanked by other speakers; Alex Liu, Cheryl L. Dorsey and Pamela Chan, Byanyima emphasised why the ideology of racism “must be removed from our culture”
When people cannot access health care or education because the debt crisis chokes off financing in majority black and brown countries. What do you call that? That’s racism.
She talked about new HIV medication that could help save many lives.
But high prices and monopolies are set to keep many people locked out. Millions of black and brown people will, again, be denied life-saving medicine.
“Policies that have denied and continue to deny life-saving HIV medicines are racist”
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