2006 UN High Level Meeting on AIDS

The process continues

It's midnight on Thursday in New York and it appears as though the efforts of civil society and of some progressive governments might have paid off. A substantially stronger draft Political Declaration has been produced and assuming it survives the night I suspect it will offer some hope for finishing the week with a statement that is acceptable to the maority of civil society.

Whilst it includes a reaffirmation of uivesal access commitments made at the G8 and World Summit the draft I am referring to still doesn't set any global targets for achieving universal access, such as the treatment one we have been arguing for.

However, the reiteration of the universal access goals provides an important opportunity that we can build on.

At the meeting the UN Secretary General tabled the results of the global consultation on universal access which wa run by UNAIDS. In the report he identifies six vital steps to achieving that goal: setting and supporting national AIDS priorities; providing predictable funding; adopting large scale measures to strengthen human resources for health service provision; removing barriers to affordable condoms, drugs and diagnostics; protecting and promoting the rights of vulnerable groups; and a commitment to monitoring progress on all these fronts.

These recommendations represent a solid platform to take forward the global AIDS response and deserve widespread support. Combined with a set of international and national targets we will have a blue print for action on AIDS for the next five years.

A global target to ensure that by 2010, 10 million people living with HIV have access to life saving treatment - which we have been saying all along - would be a powerful demonstration of a shared global commitment to tackle the epidemic.

That very call is made in today's International Herald Tribune by the Alliance's Executive Director Alvaro Bermeo. You can read it on line at http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/01/opinion/edlet.php

If however, given the difficulties we experienced this week, the UN can not generate the will to convene again and agree on such a target, then - to lend a phrase -  a coalition of the willing must take that lead.

Women demand action and accountability on AIDS in New York

One of the areas of disagreement at the meeting this week has been the language about and approach to women's rights and to their role in reducing vulnerability to and the impact of HIV.

Unbelievably conservative governments are opposing lanugue in support of the empowerment of women and girls.

As a result women's groups have issued a statement making their claims clear. They include calls on the Un to:

• Intensify efforts to increase the capacity of women and adolescent girls to protect themselves from the risk of HIV-infection including by creating and committing adequate resources to an enabling environment for the empowerment of women;
• Protect and promote women's and girls' full enjoyment of all human rights including their rights to have control and decide freely on all matters related to their sexuality, including their sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination and violence, ensuring access to comprehensive health care and health services, including male and female condoms; and invest in the fast-track development of female controlled prevention methods and microbicides.
• Ensure full access to comprehensive information and education, including sexuality education.
• Strengthen women's economic independence; and reiterate the importance of the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality.
• Commit to strengthening legal, policy, administrative and other measures for the prevention and elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls, including harmful traditional practices, abuse, early and forced marriage, rape, including marital rape and other forms of sexual violence against women is addressed as an integral part of the national and international HIV/AIDS response; and providing post-exposure prophylaxis to women survivors of violence.

This is the text of an opinion piece about where the negotiations are at and how we believe they can be salvaged, namely through an affirmation of the 2001 Declaration and an agreement by the international community to reconvene later this year to create a plan for making good on its universal access promise.

5 years after the UN General Assembly met to decide on how to respond to the global AIDS crisis world leaders are meeting again in New York this week to review progress and renew commitment to fighting the disease.

Despite some advances since 2001, including substantially increased funding and expanded access to HIV treatment, everyone agrees that continued success requires a new and revitalised willingness on the part of governments to fulfil their promises.

The biggest and most important test of the success or failure of this week’s meeting will be a simple one, namely whether or not the UN can agree to sustain the effort to prevent more people from being infected with HIV and treat more people living with AIDS.

At last year’s G8 meeting in Scotland and World Summit in New York leaders from across the globe committed to a massive scaling up of HIV prevention, treatment and care with the aim of achieving universal access to these services by 2010.

Since then the United Nations, governments and civil society have been working on a plan to make that happen. However, despite agreeing that the proposed plan would be discussed this week at the High Level Meeting on AIDS at UN headquarters, there has been no sign of it.

The plan for achievcing universal access included six vital steps:

-          setting and supporting national priorities;

-          providing predictable funding;

-          adopting largescale measures to strengthen human resources;

-          removing barriers to affordable prevention commodities, drugs and diagnostics;

-          protecting and promoting the rights of vulnerable groups; and

-          a commitment to monitoring progress on all these fronts at the national level.

These recommendations represent a solid platform for progress in the fight against AIDS and deserve widespread support.

However, a lack of leadership, direction and forsight among member states has conspired to rob the plan of any opportunity to gather that support at the UN this week.

The G8 and World Summit, where we agreed on universal access, were global processes that secured the endorsement of the international community as a whole, both rich and poor countries, those heavily affected by HIV and AIDS and those with relatively contained HIV epidemics.

Despite these differences, governments were able to reach agreement on the urgent need to provide people living with and affected by HIV access to prevention and treatment services, wherever they live.

The outcomes of both the G8 and World Summits illustrate the potential of international cooperation. But equally the failure by the UN this week to agree on how to deliver on the promise of universal access demonstrates the inability of the international system to turn its rhetoric into reality.

It is therefore vital, both for the future fight against AIDS and to rescue any residual faith in the international system, that we turn this situation around.

Making universal access real for people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS will require an implementation plan that is unlikely to be agreed before the meeting finishes on Friday. But what the international community can agree to is the development of that plan wth essential international and national targets later this year.

The gains we have made in the global fight against AIDS have been achieved with international leadership and determination and there is no reason whatsoever that the necessary leadership and determination can not be mounted again.

In the event that the UN doesn’t make a commitment to convene again to make good on its promise of universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and care, then like minded countries, many of whom have been working for a decent outcome this week, must take the lead and deliver what was agreed at the World Summit last year.

Writing from the High Level Meeting on AIDS in New York Joseph O’Reilly argues that the UN is failing to deliver a strategy for realising universal access: the next vital step in the global fight against AIDS.

Civil society expresses concern at state of negotiations

After three very frustrating days of discussions with Member States civil society representatives at the High Level Meeting have gone public with their concern at both the process and possible outcomes of this week's meeting.

In a letter to General Assembly President Jan Eliasson and Secretary General Kofi Anan civil society has expressed 'deep concern about the highly unsatisfactory negotiation process currently in place for developing the proposed Political Declaration.'

In the letter, which the Alliance along with many other non-government and community based organisations has signed, civil society states that it currently feels as though it will have to publicly criticise and dissacociate itself from the Political Declaration unless substantial improvements are made to it.

I've heard from colleagues in the UK and others that the break down in negotiations here at the UN is now receiving widespread coverage in the mainstream media, including on the BCC in the UK and on the World Service.

This wil no doubt help increase the pressure on the President, Secretary General and Co-Chairs of the High Level Meeting. 

It's early morning in New York and I'm about to join civil society colleagues at a check in where plans for how to respond to the latest draft of the Political Declaration will be made.

What ever happened to universal access?

Everyone in New York from civil society agrees that the latest version of the Political Declaration - the document which will be issued at the conclusion of the High Level Meeting - is very disappointing.

Chief among our concerns is the almost complete absence from the document of the commitment to achieve universal access. The relationship between reviewing progress in implementing the 2001 Declaration of Commitment and considering how to achive universal access has been and remains very unclear.

This meeting was agreed in 2001 for the purposes of undertaking a mid-term review of actions aimed at fulfilling the commitments made in 2001. The G8 and World Summit commitments to universal access and the work of the Global Steering Committee on the same issue were included in the agenda more recently but not with a clear sense of what all this was going to mean for the meeting as a whole. As a result there is a general sense of confusion about what it is that we should be looking to have achieved by Friday.

From the Alliance's point of view there are numerous ways in which the Political Declaration could be improved but given the time constraints we are focussing on one. This involves getting a stronger mention of the universal access process into the document, together with a commitment to develop an implementation plan for achieving universal access, including agreement on international and national targets.

Our proposal is to insert two new paragraphs into the document as follows:

• Welcome the 2005 World Summit Commitment to a massive scaling up of HIV prevention, treatment and care with the aim of coming as close as possible to the goal of universal access by 2010;
• Acknowledge, the Secretary General’s Note ‘Scaling up HIV prevention, treatment, care and support’ which identifies common obstacles to scaling up and makes recommendations for addressing such obstacles for accelerated and expanded action;

And to amend paragraph 43 by including the italicised text below:

• 43. Commit to set in 2006, through an inclusive process, an internationally agreed plan with international and national targets reflecting the urgent need to scale up significantly HIV prevention, treatment, care and support with the aim of achieving the goal of universal access to prevention, treatment care and support by 2010, as well as to set and maintain sound and rigorous monitoring and evaluation frameworks;

We believe that this would allows us to do more detailed work in implementing the universal access committment following the High Level Meeting.

Alliance strength in diversity

All of the Alliance's official delegates to the High Level Meeting arrived safely in New York over the weekend, including Magate from our linking organisation ANCS in Senegal, Andriy from Alliance Ukraine, Anandi from Alliance India, Javier who's a memer of Alliance staff based in Latin America and Mandeep, Bacha, Fareed and I from the Secretariat.

(That's from left to right, Anandi, Andriy, Magate and Mandeep at our preparatory meeting on Sunday morning.)

Seeing the group share experiences and perspectives from their countries and regions and work together on agreeing common priorities and strategy has been very rewarding.

The fact that the Alliance brings all of these people together and provides an opportunity to add value to both their individual policy work and to ours as an organisation is I believe a powerful confirmation of the Alliance model.

We're also learning lots about what's most valuable to people working in the field and about how we can leverage our collective energy and actions to greater effect.

I think its going to be an interesting and very rewarding week for the Alliance and I hope above all that by being here we'll be able to make a contribution to securing a better outcome for the fight agains AIDS.

News from the High Level Meeting

Members of the Alliance delegation will be posting daily updates from the UN High Level Meeting, being held in New York from 31 May to 2 June 2006.