UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

UNAIDS The First 10 Years158Ben Plumley, Director of the UNAIDS Executive Office until March 2007, added, “I don’tthink the UN family was at peace enough with itself [to have those resources inside theUN] … Nonetheless, we have, in the donors, an acceptance that a good proportion – notenough, by any means, but a good proportion – of donor aid should [flow] through a multilateralmechanism”.At some meetings there had been downright hostility towards the UN. Piot recalled: “… Soat some point in the negotiations, one G8 [Group of Eight] donor said, ‘Well, why shouldwe have the UN here? Why don’t we replace the UN by somebody from a pharmaceuticalcompany?’ I mean … that was the level of hostility against the UN system”.UNAIDSfought hard toensure a strongand equal voicefor the developingcountries in theGlobal Fund.Furthermore, Mauras believes that civil society, which was very involved, did not want “aUnited Nations kind of outfit”. They wanted, “… a private-public formula, where donors andrecipient countries as well as organized civil society and the UN had a seat at the table”.Defining roles as a new actor emergesPiot and his colleagues had to be politically pragmatic, and they worked hard to get theGlobal Fund up and running, despite the view from many that it would be the end ofUNAIDS. Piot always smiles when this is said: “The death of UNAIDS has been announcedso many times”. UNAIDS fought hard to ensure a strong and equal voice for the developingcountries in the Global Fund.An important problem, recalled Mauras, was that “the creation of a global funding outfitshould not enter into competition with all the other agencies, especially UNAIDS. In otherwords, it should truly be a funding mechanism searching for additionality, plus it should notenter directly into operations”.When the planning phase for the Global Fund was completed in mid-December 2001, itwas clear that the Global Fund was a financing mechanism, not an implementing or technicallyoriented body. It would raise and transfer funding to programmes in countries but itwould not design, set up or run the programmes.Plumley stresses that there was always the expectation from some people (possibly not atfirst within the Global Fund) that “… entities like UNAIDS and others will really drive thepolicy agenda, continue to advocate and be there to support this mechanism”.The Global Fund is a partnership between governments, civil society and the private sector.Its Board includes representatives of governments (an equal number of donor and developingcountries), plus two nongovernmental organization seats and two private sector donorseats. Each constituency is responsible for selecting its representatives. WHO, UNAIDS andthe World Bank, the Global Fund’s trustee, have non-voting seats on the Board. There is