Ben Phillips Profile picture
Author, How to Fight Inequality. Comms Director @UNAIDS. Justice is not given, it is won. This is personal.
Jun 27, 2023 8 tweets 3 min read
Wow you really can travel back in time. The wayback machine can take you to versions of announcements companies made and how they changed them after public pressure. Take this one by ViiV. March 3rd 2022 vs March 8th 2022:

3rd March 2022 was a "STATEMENT ON VOLUNTARY LICENSE" that stated "a rigorous assessment" reached the "conclusion that we are currently unable to secure a generic partner. Therefore, we will be the sole supplier of cabotegravir LA for PrEP globally".
Dec 6, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
UNAIDS has 3 ace comms roles advertised, all worldwide in scope, all based in Joburg as part of our networked centre. Applications from people living with HIV particularly welcome. Applications from women & nationals of non-/under-represented member states particularly encouraged One of the new UNAIDS roles is to join the media team as Communications Officer, Media (P3). Serving the whole world, out of Joburg.
Deadline 15 Jan (sorry that the forms are long so start very early!)
erecruit.unaids.org/public/hrd-cl-…
Dec 4, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
When the public conversation about trans people is filled with dog whistles that imply that trans people and the people who care for and about trans people are a threat, then it is absolutely guaranteed that at least one person on the edge will act this way. Guaranteed. The replies when I tweeted concern about a murder threat being made to a doctor Image
Sep 4, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
Faced with rising inequality and desperate poverty, is it fair to cut taxes on the rich?
It’s only fair that you hear Liz Truss’s answer Here is what charities and churches are calling for:
Aug 14, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
🧵As India & Pakistan celebrate 75 years of independence, many older people are also commemorating what they & their parents went through with Partition. One person’s story: a friend told me of the horrors his Sikh family faced as they fled what had become Pakistan, to India. Years later, when he spoke out against attacks on muslims in India, family friends asked him “after all your family went through in Partition, how could you speak up to defend *them*?” His reply: “After all my family went through in Partition, how could I not?”
Aug 13, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
Genève Les fleurs
Aug 1, 2022 7 tweets 5 min read
This is Prof. Madhukar Pai, MD, PhD, FCAHS is a Canada Research Chair in Epidemiology & Global Health at McGill University, Montreal.

He is global health eminence par excellence.

And he just eviscerated global health.

🧵🪡 Madhu’s speech at the International AIDS Conference just shook global health at the core. Three excerpts here.

1) Global health structures are racist; and this is not a bug, it is a feature.
May 29, 2022 14 tweets 3 min read
Can I share with you a story? It’s a story about Fransisca. When Francisca—a young woman from a rural town in Chile—turned 20 years old, she and her partner received the happy news of the arrival of their first child. She was diagnosed with HIV in a routine prenatal test. Imagine hearing that news, imagine your worries. But: Did you know that transmission to babies is preventable? Francisca took all appropriate measures to minimize the risk of vertical transmission of HIV and gave birth to a baby boy who does not have HIV.
May 26, 2021 12 tweets 7 min read
Tune in at 16:45 European Time today. @andrewlavali from @GovernanceFor in Sierra Leone, @tanyamorgancox from European NGO network @CONCORD_Europe, & I will be engaging with Commissioner @JuttaUrpilainen & the European Parliament on how to fight inequality
multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/en/deve-femm_2… @andrewlavali @GovernanceFor @tanyamorgancox @CONCORD_Europe @JuttaUrpilainen Thank you to @tomastobe @MEugeniaRPalop @UdoBullmann and others for organising this vital conversation.
May 11, 2021 9 tweets 4 min read
After Israeli forces used stun grenades & other munitions inside al Aqsa mosque, injuring over 280, a video shows - in the background - a fire at one of Islam’s holiest sites. And the foreground? An ecstatic Israeli crowd chants “May their names be erased!”
At #SheikhJarrah, Jerusalem, this conversation:

“You know this is not your house. This is my house!"

“Yes, but if I don't steal it, somebody else will steal it.”

Jul 18, 2020 4 tweets 2 min read
UN Secretary-General António Guterres is just about to deliver the Nelson Mandela Lecture. He has chosen as his topic inequality. He will break with the usual careful UN language and tell it straight: events.nelsonmandela.org/events/2020/07… Covid, Guterres will say has “laid bare risks we have ignored for decades [and] exposed fallacies and falsehoods everywhere: the lie that free markets can deliver healthcare for all, the myth that we are all in the same boat.” events.nelsonmandela.org/events/2020/07…
Jun 4, 2020 27 tweets 9 min read
The protests are working, in so many ways. Shall we count the ways? Please add to this.

1. Justice: The lead killer charged, then all 4 charged and charges increased.

2. Politics: Klobuchar will not be the Running-Mate; Ferguson has a black woman mayor; Steven King is over. 3. The public conversation has shifted. Defunding is on the agenda. All 50 states have seen rallies. Mainline white churches finally speaking out. The power elite looks split.
4. Massive organizing, especially black young people.
5. Politicians and businesses in bargaining mode
May 17, 2020 5 tweets 2 min read
To understand inequality, economists & political scientists only take us so far. We need artists & musicians. Nina Simone’s Mississippi Goddam is a blunt lesson told to the privileged about their myths & lies. <thread> First, that the radicalism of the oppressed is the problem: The second lie the privileged tell the oppressed is that if only they’d adjust their tone, be more polite, the privileged would give way. Nina Simone’s reply:
Apr 8, 2019 8 tweets 6 min read
“When policies increase inequality of wealth, they increase the power of the wealthy in the policy-making arena, which leads to *more* policies which increase inequality - an infinity loop that undermines democracy.” @LFLopezCalva @UNDP at Notre Dame Inequality Conference “We know inequality is bad: everyone now agrees that. We even know what to do about it. But this is not being done. Why? Because those at the top are stopping it happening. The problem of inequality is a problem of power.” @Winnie_Byanyima @Oxfam, Notre Dame Inequality Conference
Mar 25, 2017 5 tweets 1 min read
@_alice_evans @dinapomeranz @leecrawfurd @aidthoughts I agree debate is good. Lee and Tom though are debaters not judges. @_alice_evans @dinapomeranz @leecrawfurd @aidthoughts Dina re your q on this ethics and evidence match - no country went literate privately.