UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

Chapter 5UNAIDS has developed an additional range oftools to support national programmes, includinga comprehensive programming guide andpeer education kit. An AIDS Awareness Cardstrategy includes three distinct cards targetingpeacekeepers, uniformed personnel andUN employees with basic information onHIV prevention, and a pocket to carry acondom. Kristofferson explained that hehad the idea for the card during the firstsession of the Security Council meetingin 2000, when Holbrooke took thefloor and expressed his frustration. Heexplained that Holbrooke “held up a 46-pagemanual on HIV and said, ‘I don’t understand this, do you?’ andI said ‘No’”. He said: “You can’t bring a 46-page manual to a peacekeeperwho comes from the Chittagong hill tracts or the outskirts ofNairobi with a very rudimentary educational background”.The peacekeeping and uniformed services cards are now available in18 languages, covering approximately 90% of the nationalities servingin peacekeeping operations worldwide. Kristofferson estimates thateven though 1.2 million have been produced, they cannot meet the demand.An HIV/AIDSawareness card inSpanish. They havebeen produced in18 languages.115Kristofferson explained the importance of seeking political partnerships at the highestlevel: “We started seeking partnership agreements with political parties – Ministers ofDefence, Justice and so on – and today we have signed partnership agreements with 48governments around the world where they have committed to take part or the whole ofour peer education guide as part of the curricula for training police, soldiers and peacekeepers”.In addition to the growing engagement of Member States, leading regional bodies areincreasingly acknowledging the need to integrate information on HIV prevention into theoperations of uniformed services, including the African Union, the Caribbean Community(CARICOM), the Commonwealth of Independent States and the North Atlantic TreatyOrganization.