Over 100 people attended a joint Alliance and Global Fund satellite on Sunday to share their experiences and perspectives on Global Fund implementation. Speakers from Ukraine, Senegal, Thailand, and Ecuador, among others, talked about civil society's role, and the lessons learned so far.
At the start of the session Alliance executive director Alvaro Bermejo summed up the reasons why the Global Fund is important for civil society - because it has redefined governance and national ownership. This has been through civil society participation, through greater transparency, by being country led and demand driven, and through large scale funding of civil society activity including that of marginalised groups.
Duncal Earle, Team Leader of Operational Partnerships and Country Support at the Global Fund also outlined ways in which civil society is involved in the Global Fund and raised the question of when is the right time to transfer the role of Principal Recipient to civil society and others, so that programmes and renewal are not jepordised.
Asia Russell from Health Gap told delegates that many Global Fund partners see the role of civil society as bringing up the difficult and political issues – such as funding the fund. But while they look to civil society organisations to take an advocacy role for the Global Fund, there also needs to be a role for civil society as providers and implementers in the response, and the buisness model of the Global Fund needs to support the role of civil society as implementers.
Asia added that in order to use all the capacity available in country to scale up responses to HIV, the Global Fund needs to give national civil society organisations more power and influence.
The session concluded with recommendations for civil society leaders to engage more and for civil society networks to become the conduit for information and communication. We also need to be aware that it is currently the exception rather than the rule that there are national civil society consortia that can watchdog Global FUnd performance, and work to change this. There also needs to be more thought about who takes on the role of leading civil society innovation within the Global Fund - currently the only place for this to happen is at the Country Co-ordinated Mechanism (CCM) level. However, because the Global Fund is county driven and demand driven - and because it does not have a national presence and is not built into national structures - there is a gap for the role of civil society.
The session ended with an open discussion, and a call for governments to act upon the need for greater investment in capacity strengthening.
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