As part of UNESCO’s strategy to respond to the global HIV and AIDS epidemic, the Culture, HIV and AIDS program works to support the development of culturally appropriate policies and programming that are gender-responsive, human-rights based and built on a thorough analysis of the cultural and social specificities of those communities concerned. UNESCO’s ‘official’ definition of culture as contained in the UNESCO Mexico City Declaration on Cultural Policies (1982) reads as following: “a set of distinctive spiritual and material, intellectual and emotional characteristics which define a society or social group and in addition to the arts and letters, as encompassing ways of life and fundamental rights of the person, value systems, traditions and beliefs.” Project that are labialized as “cultural approaches” needs to be tailored strategies grounded on the traditions, beliefs, values and practices specific to a particular group, that also mobilize the group’s cultural resources and assets as a basis for social engagement and development. Against this background, this docuemnt seeks inter alia to analyse some of the key factors that contribute to the creation of an “enabling environment” for culturally appropriate HIV and AIDS policies (i.e. a local context in which the conditions, factors, actors and dynamics required for the promotion and development of these policies are present).