UNAIDS has expressed deep sorrow at the death of Ratu Epeli Nailatikau, the former President of Fiji and a long-serving UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador for the Pacific, praising his decades-long leadership in advancing a rights‑based response to HIV across the region. Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said Nailatikau “transformed the region’s HIV response” through an unwavering commitment to dignity, human rights and the removal of stigma.
Byanyima highlighted several concrete milestones in Nailatikau’s work, noting that he chaired the first regional meeting of Pacific Parliamentarians on HIV in 2004 — a convening that helped bring elected leaders into sustained engagement with the epidemic. His advocacy, she said, contributed directly to stronger laws and policies, most notably Fiji’s human rights‑based HIV/AIDS Act of 2011, which positioned people living with HIV at the centre of the country’s legal and health responses.
Throughout his public life, Nailatikau used high‑profile offices to normalise open dialogue about HIV and to challenge discrimination. UNAIDS credited him with sustained lobbying that helped to remove HIV‑related travel restrictions — rules that for years prevented or discouraged people living with HIV from entering some countries — and with ensuring that national policy shifted from punitive measures toward protection of rights and access to care.
Nailatikau also made community engagement a pillar of his work. UNAIDS noted he travelled widely across Fiji’s islands, visiting schools and rural communities to raise awareness among young people and to stand in solidarity with those living with HIV. Those outreach efforts were frequently framed as efforts to break down fear and misinformation and to promote prevention, testing and treatment without shame.
In its statement, UNAIDS called Nailatikau “a bridge between leadership and community,” saying his approach leaves a lasting blueprint for an inclusive, people‑centred model to end AIDS in the Pacific. Byanyima and UNAIDS emphasised that his interventions helped shift both public conversation and policy, creating space for civil society, lawmakers and health services to work together more effectively.
The agency’s tribute frames Nailatikau’s death as a significant loss for Pacific HIV advocacy and human rights. His work at the intersection of governance and grassroots engagement is being remembered as a defining influence on how the region confronts HIV — moving away from stigma and toward dignity, legal protection and community‑led solutions.
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