Preface

Living or surviving is a difficult task for everyone. Somebody finds it much more difficult. Poverty, gender inequality, lack of instruction and diseases are all factors which make people’s life worse and make individuals more vulnerable to other individual’s wickedness. As a loss of power produces diseases, diseases produce a loss of power. Loss of power and men’s wickedness to other men (homo homini lupus) are the two funding elements of stigma and discrimination, which hit people all over the world. But stigma and discrimination mainly concern those who are affected by morbid conditions such as HIV/AIDS, which stimulates moral judgment and arrogance. The only way to fight stigma and discrimination is by “mobilizing the Power of Humanity”.

The safe ground which fosters and encourages the Power of Humanity is based on education, sharing of knowledge and good practices, dialogue between different institutions and cultures, and mutual understanding. This publication, for which all workers involved in the fight against stigma and discrimination must be grateful to the authors, goes in that direction. Living on the Outside is a document full of wisdom and is an inspiring source for concrete solutions, which are brought to the attention of all the components of the society and, more in particular, of those of us who really want to make the difference.

Massimo Barra,
President of the Italian Red Cross