The present invention relates to the use of a Severe Combined T-B-Immune Deficient (SCID) mouse engrafted with human immunocompetent cells (huSCID-mouse) as an animal model for the evaluation of the effectiveness of an HIV vaccine. Furthermore, the present invention relates to a method for the evaluation of an HIV vaccine, wherein a huSCID-mouse of the invention is inoculated with the HIV vaccine and thereafter challenged with HI-virus.