Anne-christine d'Adesky

Anne-Christine d'Adesky is a journalist, author, documentary filmmaker, activist and human rights advocate.

Biography

She was born in the United States into a Francophone family, with roots in France and Haiti. She holds a Master Degree in Journalism from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and a Bachelor’s Degree from Barnard College. In addition to English, she speaks French, Spanish and Haitian Creole. In 1984, she was a foreign correspondent in Haiti working as a stringer for major newspapers including the San Francisco Examiner and later, the Village Voice. Here, she began writing about HIV which had emerged as a new epidemic in Haiti and the USA. She wrote about HIV/AIDS for various newspapers, including the New York Native, In These Times, and later magazines including The Advocate.

She was nominated for a Pultizer and George Polk Prize by the San Francisco Examiner for her frontpage exposes of Haitian military massacres. She received repeated anonymous death threats linked to ex-Haitian army officers which prompted a break from work in Haiti. She focused instead on intensive investigation into the stolen fortune of deposed Haitian dictator 'Baby' Doc Duvalier, collaborating with the Center for Constitutional Rights in a landmark Haitian torture case that provided an early litmus test of the International Criminal Court system for such cases. Living in New York City United States, she delved into the science, treatment and social issues of global AIDS and politics. She wrote editorials for the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and served as guest and staff editors for magazines, including The Advocate and Out.

She was Senior Editor at Out magazine in the mid 1990s in charge of health coverage, and also wrote investigative features and long-form profiles. In 1998, she launched HIV Plus magazine, where she served as editor in chief for two years before the magazine was sold to another media company. She then turned to writing a series on global AIDS for the newsletter of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, AmFAR, and expanded it into a book, Moving Mountains: The Race to Treat Global AIDS. She also co-produced a companion documentary film, Pills, Profits, Protest: Chronicle of the Global AIDS Movement, which aired for a year on the US cable program, Showtime. She also wrote about AIDS for magazines such as SEED, the Nation, newspapers such as the San Francisco Examiner, and health agencies such as the World Health Organization.

As an activist, she has been active in the peace and women's movements and attended the famous Seneca Women's Peace Camp, where she protested the presence of nuclear cruise missles on US soil. She was an early member of ACT UP. who participated in the first Wall Street protest, and other famous actions, demanding faster access to life-saving HIV medications, and later, access to HIV drugs for people living in poor countries. She has continued to publicly identify as an AIDS activist-journalist and remained active on a range of issues, advocating a 'humanrights-based' approach to AIDS care, or other issues. In recent years, she has focused on the impact of the epidemic on women, and vulnerable children.

In 2003, she began humanitarian work in Africa, focusing on the issue of gender-based violence linked to HIV/AIDS and the use of rape in war in East Africa. She launched and served as Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of a global initiative, WE-ACTx (Women’s Equity in Access to Care and Treatment), based in San-Francisco and Kigali, that helps Rwandan women affected by HIV/AIDS who are survivors of genocidal rape, and orphans. WE-ACTx works in partnership with the Rwandan government and 24 non-profit organizations (NGOs) to provide free, comprehensive HIV care, including free drugs and services to over 6,000 Rwandans (as of mid-2008), many widows of the genocide who survived mass rape and are living with HIV/AIDS as a result. The organization has spawned a sister organization, WE-ACTx for Hope, with an all-Rwandan staff of 60 that operates three clinics in Kigali. D'Adesky currently serves as Co-Founder and a Boardmember of WE-ACTx, and is actively networking with womens' groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Sudan, and other conflict zones, to share the approach and lessons taken in Rwanda. In 2007, she returned to journalism, helping to create and launch a new global online social networking portal for the global women's movement, PulseWire, linked to World Pulse Magazine. In 2008, she began pre-production for a new online video magazine, Talk to the Future: Public Conversations with Today's Boldest Voices, where she serves as Producer and Host. The pilot issue is slated for August 2008.

Bibliography

• 2004 Moving Mountains: The Race to Treat Global AIDS (Verso, updated, ppbk 2006)
• 1994 Under the Bone (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Filmography

• 2003 Pills, Profits, and Protest (documentary) (co-producer)

Awards

• 2000 amfAR’s inaurugural Award of Courage for "pioneering public information about HIV/AIDS"
• 2006 "AIDS Hero" Award, San Francisco.

Nominations

• Pulitzer Prize nomination
• George Polk Award nomination, best foreign reporting
• December 2007 OUT Magazine nomination, 'One of Top 35 To Watch' most important people in global AIDS.

External links

• www.we-actx.org (URL of organizational website)
• www.outcast-films.com (URL of film distributor)
• www.versobooks.com (URL of global AIDS book distributor)
• Anne-Christine D'Adesky at IMDb