UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

UNAIDS The First 10 Years168 Some reflections on success in order to move aheadThe Executive Director’s report to the 13th PCB meeting, held in Lisbon in December 2002,spelt out some of the major successes in the response to the epidemic in recent years (aswell as responding to the Five Year Evaluation Report). These included:The mobilization of senior political leadership on all continents, raising the profileof the epidemic in national, regional and global forums, most notably through theUN Secretary-General’s leadership in mobilizing new partnersNational Strategic Plans developed through a participatory process in virtuallyall affected countries, with a tripling of the number of high-level national AIDScouncils or commissions in the past three yearsA nearly sevenfold increase in international resources targeted at AIDS in Africa toapproximately US$ 1 billion‘These arenot UNAIDSachievements;they are globalachievements. Noneof them could havebeen accomplishedwithout theconcerted effortsof the much largerand still rapidlygrowing coalitionthat now comprisesthe “global AIDSmovement”’.The establishment of new funding mechanisms, notably the World Bank’s Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Programme for Africa (MAP) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,Tuberculosis and MalariaThat the Security Council had taken up the issues of AIDS in Africa, and HIV preventionin UN peacekeeping operationsThat the UN General Assembly held a Special Session on HIV/AIDS, resulting inclear agreement among Member States on strategies and approaches, and a setof ambitious and measurable goals and targetsAn order-of-magnitude reduction in the price of AIDS drugs for developingcountries.As the report rightly concludes, ‘these are not UNAIDS achievements; they are globalachievements’. The Programme had a major role to play in each of them (though somecritics would question how great a role) but – and this is key – ‘none of them could havebeen accomplished without the concerted efforts of the much larger and still rapidlygrowing coalition that now comprises the “global AIDS movement”’.The purpose of taking stock of these successes was not self-congratulatory, but ‘to remindus that the most significant challenges we are facing today are largely a result of thosesuccesses’. Over the next five years, the UNAIDS Secretariat and Cosponsors wouldstruggle to meet these challenges and to ensure the sustainability of the successes.