New Online Network Aims to Share Research on Religion and HIV and AIDS. 18/7/10

Vienna. A new online network for researchers, practitioners, policy makers and faith leaders to promote understanding of issues at the interface of religion and HIV and AIDS has been launched on the opening day of the 18th International AIDS Conference in Vienna.

Called HARC – HIV, AIDS and Religion Collaborative – the network is intended to develop a deeper understanding of the theological and religious insights that have flowed from faith-related responses to the HIV pandemic.

“There is a huge need out there to make our research more accessible,” said Gillian Paterson of Heythrop College University of London, a co-moderator of HARC, at the 18 July launch of the network in the Multi-Faith Networking Zone of the AIDS conference’s “Global Village”.

HARC is based around a Web site – www.harcnetwork.org – that offers a moderated forum for participants around specific research interests, a “safe space” to work collaboratively, an online library, document sharing facilities, and special working groups.

Beverley Haddad of the University of KwaZulu Natal in Pietermaritzburg highlighted the importance of the online network as an initiative involving institutions and organizations in the global North and the global South.

She described how her university’s school of religion and theology, through a programme called CHART (Collaborative on HIV and AIDS in Religion and Theology), had begun to map the interface between HIV/AIDS, religion and theology.

“HARC begins to give us the opportunity to share these resources with the international community,” she said. “A key issue in the network is that we begin to find ways as academics, activists and practitioners to work collaboratively together.”

Phumzile Zondi-Mabize of INERELA+, an international network of religious leaders living with, or personally affected, by HIV, said HARC would help make available resources developed by the network on the relationship between religion and HIV and AIDS.

“Collaboration is the way forward,” said Nyambura Njoroge of the Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiative in Africa (EHAIA).

HARC is a joint initiative of the University of Glasgow, Heythrop College University of London, and the University of KwaZulu Natal.

Its partners are CHART, the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance, Globethics.net, INERELA+ and the World Council of Churches through its programme on health and healing and EHAIA.

Richard Bauer, of Catholic AIDS Action in Namibia, a social service NGO, explained how declining resources meant his institution is increasingly facing ethical dilemmas about offering treatment for HIV.

He said, “I need the help of good solid ethical theologians to make the ethical decisions on the ground.”

The International AIDS Conference is held every two years and draws more than 20,000 medical professionals and scientists, policy makers, persons living with HIV, and others working in the field of HIV and AIDS. In 2010 it runs from 18 to 23 July.