Why were MPs wearing red ribbons at PMQs?
Members of Parliament honour World Aids Day 2022
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Your support makes all the difference.Gathering in the House of Commons on Wednesday for Prime Minister’s Questions, MPs from both sides of the chamber were seen sporting red ribbons on their lapels in honour of World Aids Day.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer wore one, as did the SNP’s Ian Blackford. Prime minister Rishi Sunak did not, although the majority of his frontbenchers did.
World Aids Day takes place this year on Thursday 1 December.
The occasion was first conceived in 1988 by James W Bunn and Thomas Netter, two public information officers working for the Global Programme on Aids at the World Health Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland, in order to raise awareness around the disease.
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids took over the event in 1996 before the World Aids Campaign became independent in 2004.
The red ribbon was designed in support of the movement by a New York collective called Visual Aids in 1991.
They took inspiration from the yellow ribbons being worn at the time by American veterans of the first Gulf War, the colour chosen for its associations with blood, righteous anger and with passion.
A powerful symbol of solidarity ever since, the ribbon gained prominence when 100,000 were handed out at the Freddie Mercury Aids Awareness Tribute concert at Wembley Stadium in 1992, in honour of the late Queen frontman killed by the disease.
For more information on World Aids Day 2022, you can visit the campaign’s official website.
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