During World AIDS Day 2011, on 1st December, many studies show the persistent taboos about AIDS particularly among young people. It already affects 41 million people worldwide. In spite of reliable data on HIV epidemics in the MENA, according to USAIDS, an estimated 460 000 people were living with HIV at the end of 2009, up from 180 000 in 2001.
 

The epidemics is still very limited to populations at risk (no contagion of the general population): injecting drug users (in Iran and in Afghanistan), men who have sex with men (in Tunisia or in Egypt where the prevalence is higher than among sex workers). “The HIV epidemic in the Islamic Republic of Iran is centred largely among people who inject drugs; an estimated 14% of this population was living with HIV in 2007. In Egypt, an estimated 6% of MSM are living with HIV. In 2006, an estimated 2%–4% of female sex workers were living with HIV  in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Yemen.”

Although they do not provide complete protection against HIV spread (…) the prevailing sexually conservative cultural norms seemed to have played so far a protective role in slowing and limiting HIV transmission in MENA relative to other regions (…) HIV prevention efforts in this region, which continue to be stymied by stigma associated with HIV/AIDS and related risk behaviors, need to be aggressively expanded with a focus on controlling HIV spread along the contours of risk and vulnerability. There is still a window of opportunity to control further HIV transmission among high-risk groups in MENA that, if missed, may entail a health and socioeconomic burden that the region, in large part, is unprepared for.

If Arab society suffers from a major taboo on AIDS and from the behaviors associated with them, religion may play a positive role in the prevention and containment of the disease. However, populations at risk remain, infected or not, largely marginalized. As recalled in the UNAIDS report, across MENA, prostitution is largely illegal and homosexual relationships are forbidden.

However, last April 2011, the GCC decided to struggle religious leaders role “in prevention and the reduction of stigma and discrimination“. On 1 – 2 November 2011, during a Qatar Symposium organized by the Doha International Institute for Family Studies and development (DIIFSD), UNAIDS and UNICEF, the linkages between family, Millennium Development Goals and AIDS in the Middle East were stressed: families need to be empowered to provide the first line of protection against stigma, raise HIV awareness and decrease new HIV infections.