Global Development: Views from the Center
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June 01, 2006
Will the UNGASS Make a Statement?
Posted by at 01:24 PM
The United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS, or UNGASS, is underway in New York, and the big question is if the Assembly can agree on a strong path forward. A UN website provides links to the schedule, reports, and all related links.
The wording of the resolution that will come out of the UNGASS is up in the air. The US is reluctant to include hard targets for patients in treatment and for the resources necessary to reach these targets. UNAIDS estimates that the cost of providing prevention, treatment, and care services will be $20-$23 million by 2010. The US was the largest bilateral donor to HIV/AIDS in 2005, and worries about being held responsible if much higher aid targets are not met.
UNAIDS is pushing for a commitment to "Universal Access" to treatment by 2010, meaning that anyone who needs treatment should have access to it. Activists are pushing for a “10 by 10” commitment, meaning 10 million people on treatment by 2010. Given that an earlier goal of three million on treatment by 2005 only reached 1.3 million, it is unlikely that the UN or bilateral donors will commit to another specific target they are unlikely to meet.
Setting targets for funding and treatment aren’t the only challenges. The US and Islamic states reject wording about commercial sex workers and other vulnerable groups. Language focusing on the “feminization” of the epidemic - and how to focus prevention and treatment efforts on girls and women - makes many uncomfortable.
It would be a shame if the UNGASS becomes so politically charged that a weak resolution comes out of it. Twenty five years into the epidemic, we know what works, we know what resources and which programs are needed, the question is if we can unite to get it done. A weak resolution without a clear vision will divide and dampen efforts, at a time when millions depend on the international community for their lives.
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Comments
Interesting comments on the tremendous challenges facing the UNGASS negotiators at this critical time. However, as I argue in my post on our Global Health Policy blog (http://blogs.cgdev.org/globalhealth/2006/06/the_end_of_aids_1.php), there is another crucial challenge that is not being addressed by UNGASS but should be: improving aid effectiveness within HIV/AIDS programs. In the current climate it seems unlikely that donors and host-country governments will be able to mobilize funding levels anywhere close to the $22 billion that UNAIDS is requesting. But does that mean that HIV/AIDS programs are doomed to fail?
Many of the countries represented at UNGASS have also signed aid effectiveness agreements, including the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. Perhaps it is time to bring these people and these ideas together for a comprehensive look at what is needed and how it can best be accomplished.
Posted by: Myra Sessions at June 2, 2006 10:09 AM
UNGASS? Could there really be a more appropriate name for what we expect to come out yet another UN initiative pushing for some grand global goal with no accountability really behind it? Please tell me I'm wrong this time, but I suspect that the only thing right about this one is the acronym.
Posted by: Todd Moss at June 2, 2006 10:15 AM