A paper produced jointly by Save the Children's HIV and AIDS Global Initiative and Child Protection Initiative (CPI) within the context of ICASA, Africa's largest conference on HIV/AIDS that provides a forum for exchange of experiences and lessons learned from around the world. The ICASA 2011 conference was held in Addis Ababa 4-8 December, bringing together scientists, health workers, people living with HIV, policy makers, civil society and non-governmental organizations, activists and government representatives to share and learn about successes, challenges and innovations in the prevention and control of HIV/AIDS.