In many parts of Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, stigma, criminalisation, and lack of access to health services have sparked alarming epidemics that threaten to devastate MSM communities, mirroring the HIV pandemics that ravaged gay communities in North America and Western Europe in the 1980s.

Male-male sex is illegal in 85 countries, making MSM extremely vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. Fewer than one in 20 MSM around the world has access to HIV prevention, treatment, and care, according to UNAIDS. MSM groups rarely benefit from international HIV prevention efforts because bilateral funding and grants from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria flow primarily through national governments that largely ignore the needs of MSM.

"Empowering MSM and other marginalised groups to protect themselves from HIV is one of the world's most urgent health priorities," said Dr. Peter Piot, executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

The Initiative, which was launched at the International AIDS Society conference in Sydney, will support grassroots MSM organisations, fund critical research, and advocate for increased global attention and funding for HIV/AIDS programmes specific to MSM.

The Initiative will also support epidemiological, demographic, and policy research to inform more effective HIV prevention efforts. New data indicates that the HIV pandemic among MSM is widespread and worsening.

"The frightening truth is that, in many parts of the world, we simply do not know how bad the epidemics among MSM groups may be," said Dr. Chris Beyrer, director of the Johns Hopkins Fogarty AIDS International Training and Research Programme in the United States. "Transmission among MSM is still not tracked in most countries, resulting in a significant research gap. More research is urgently needed to inform more effective HIV prevention efforts."

"A quarter century into the epidemic, MSM in many countries still do not have even the basic tools to protect themselves against HIV," said amfAR Acting CEO Kevin Frost.

"We must have the courage to stand side by side with the grassroots organisations on the front lines of this epidemic delivering services and demanding greater action from governments. With funding and support, these organisations can transform attitudes, change policy, and mobilise funding to reverse the alarming spread of HIV among MSM."

The MSM Initiative has already enlisted partners from a number of leading organisations.

"A coordinated global initiative is urgently needed to reverse the alarming rise in new infections among MSM," said George Ayala, director of education at the AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA), one of the Initiative's partner organisations. "Working together, we can more effectively fight the denial and discrimination that have made MSM so vulnerable to HIV. ..."