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Additional funding needed
Massive additional investment is required to support the global response to HIV/AIDS
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The International HIV/AIDS Alliance works with communities in developing countries to prevent the spread of HIV, support and care for those infected and ease the impact of HIV on families and communities. Since its establishment in 1993, the Alliance has provided both financial and technical support to over 1,500 HIV/AIDS projects and has worked with NGOs and CBOs from over 40 countries. This experience reveals that:
While the Alliance is not itself in a position to accurately estimate the level of investment required for an effective response to AIDS, experts have projected that global HIV/AIDS funding must be increased within the next three years to at least US$10 billion per annum. Based on the Alliance’s experience of working alongside donors, fundraising, and acting as a support organisation to smaller organisations, we believe:
While significant additional resources for HIV/AIDS are critical to meeting the challenges of AIDS, creating multiple new global funding mechanisms would be likely to cause competition and complexity while undermining co-ordination. The Alliance believes that the United Nations, its Member States and major private donors should ensure that the proposed new global funding mechanism meets all of the following conditions:
An international HIV/AIDS drug and commodity procurement fund should be established under the UN system that could leverage the buying power of developing countries and donors. Resources demarcated for the procurement of HIV/AIDS drugs, related commodities, and development of new products such as vaccines must include a strategy to strengthen related health systems infrastructure including necessary personnel training.
The Alliance’s contribution is and will continue to be:
The International HIV/AIDS Alliance mail@aidsalliance.org www.aidsalliance.org www.aidsmap.com
May 2001
To download this policy statement as a PDF file, click here
The International HIV/AIDS Alliance works with communities in developing countries to prevent the spread of HIV, support and care for those infected and ease the impact of HIV on families and communities. Since its establishment in 1993, the Alliance has provided both financial and technical support to over 1,500 HIV/AIDS projects and has worked with NGOs and CBOs from over 40 countries. This experience reveals that:
- The community, government and private sector responses to AIDS in most developing countries are and have been severely under-funded for the past fifteen years. This systematic under-funding has facilitated the expansion of the HIV epidemic and exacerbated the impact of AIDS.
- Systematic under-funding has also directly and indirectly caused one of the biggest challenges the world now faces in responding to AIDS: weak technical and managerial capacity in the voluntary, private and government sectors.
- Communities often began responding to AIDS without any external resources, whether from their own governments or from development assistance. They often continue to do so. Nevertheless, such dependence on a community’s own resources is becoming less and less tenable, especially as the burden of care and orphan support grows.
- There is an urgent and ongoing need for both AIDS-focused funding and funding to promote and support attention to AIDS in other health, development and social justice activities. Neither is a substitute for the other, and each must be tracked independently.
While the Alliance is not itself in a position to accurately estimate the level of investment required for an effective response to AIDS, experts have projected that global HIV/AIDS funding must be increased within the next three years to at least US$10 billion per annum. Based on the Alliance’s experience of working alongside donors, fundraising, and acting as a support organisation to smaller organisations, we believe:
- Activities to be funded by new and already allocated resources must be carefully co-ordinated with each country’s National HIV/AIDS Strategic Plan, but at the same time not all funding for NGO and CBO responses should be channelled through national governments. The vast majority of governments do not have adequate administrative and technical capacity to manage and support the scale and complexity of required civil society support, and even when they do, it is essential to maintain a critical and independent voice for civil society responding to AIDS.
- National HIV/AIDS Strategic Plans must define multi-sectoral priorities and allocate adequate resources to achieve targets for prevention, care, treatment and orphan support involving participation at all levels of government and civil society and of persons living with and affected by HIV/AIDS.
- While the ultimate aim of all funding must be to slow the spread of HIV and mitigate the impact of AIDS, designated funds must be invested in both civil society and public sector capacity building, as an end in and of itself that will help sustain responses to AIDS and future health crises.
- New resources should be mobilised by increasing the level of official development assistance towards the target of 0.7% of GNP of donor countries with a portion, designated in the form of grants, for HIV/AIDS programming specifically.
- New resources should also be drawn from an accelerated strategy of debt cancellation for the poorest countries that have been most affected by HIV/AIDS whereby savings are channelled into planning, development, implementation and evaluation of comprehensive HIV/AIDS programmes, as well as public health and education infrastructure support.
- Existing bilateral and multilateral funding mechanisms need to be scaled up and strengthened to: (a) guarantee adequate levels of stable financing for periods that allow longer term strategic planning and sustainability of national responses; and (b) ensure adequate technical support to expand public and civil society capacities for HIV/AIDS programming and policy making.
While significant additional resources for HIV/AIDS are critical to meeting the challenges of AIDS, creating multiple new global funding mechanisms would be likely to cause competition and complexity while undermining co-ordination. The Alliance believes that the United Nations, its Member States and major private donors should ensure that the proposed new global funding mechanism meets all of the following conditions:
- Demonstrates distinct advantages over substantial scaling up of existing bilateral and multilateral funding mechanisms.
- Recognises, complements and strengthens existing efforts with additional resources and reinforcing strategies.
- Delineates a clear plan for working with current national level mechanisms.
- Ensures rigorous technical oversight and support as necessary, inclusive governance, transparent decision-making, and a system of accountability.
- Secures long term financial commitments to increase likelihood of effectiveness.
An international HIV/AIDS drug and commodity procurement fund should be established under the UN system that could leverage the buying power of developing countries and donors. Resources demarcated for the procurement of HIV/AIDS drugs, related commodities, and development of new products such as vaccines must include a strategy to strengthen related health systems infrastructure including necessary personnel training.
The Alliance’s contribution is and will continue to be:
- To support the efforts of local NGOs and CBOs to identify and document priority needs, and to advocate for increased investment.
- To expand its own capacity to build indigenous NGO/CBO support mechanisms in developing countries that can effectively receive and pass on local financing for community responses, alongside necessary technical support and monitoring.
- To document and share tools and experiences which will increase the quality of grant-giving and technical support provision.
- To provide assistance and facilitation to donors that are seeking to support community responses to AIDS in developing countries.
The International HIV/AIDS Alliance mail@aidsalliance.org www.aidsalliance.org www.aidsmap.com
May 2001