UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

UNAIDS The First 10 Years188Piot dubbed these the “Three Ones” – inspired, he said, by reading a book on old Chinesepropaganda posters and wishing to simplify the usual UN jargon.Donor and host countries, bilateral and multilateral institutions and international nongovernmentalorganizations all endorsed these principles at the Consultation on Harmonization ofInternational AIDS Funding on 25 April 2004 in Washington, DC. The meeting was co-hostedby UNAIDS, the UK and the USA 8 .Mogedal stressed the need to ‘drive agreement’ at this meeting around three key concepts:the rationale for exceptional AIDS action, national ownership, and accountability (who isaccountable and to whom).Piot emphasized the importance of “having all the donors in the one tent”, even if theytook different approaches to their work. Ambassador Randall Tobias, then US Global AIDSCoordinator, said after the meeting: “The agreement reached today will help all partners toexercise their comparative advantage in a manner that will enhance and not constrain ourcollective response” 9 .National ownership is defined so as to include government, civil society and other nationalstakeholders, who are providers and/or beneficiaries of the AIDS response 10 . Piot alsoexplained that “when we say one authority, that does not only include the governmentsectors but also civil society”. Some governments do not seem to have understood this andtherefore civil society has been suspicious about being excluded.Arabic leafl ets on AIDSawarenessUNAIDS/G.PirozziUntil recently, donors were rarely held to account for theirperformance, and their commitments were not monitored.The Paris Declaration marks the commitment of all developmentpartners to strengthening mutual accountability mechanisms– both donors and country partners have expressedtheir intent to enhance their respective accountability to theircitizens and parliaments for their development policies, strategiesand performance.In addition to providing timely, transparent and comprehensiveinformation on aid flows so as to enable partner authoritiesto present comprehensive budget reports to their legis-8The countries attending the meeting were Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Côte d’Ivoire, Denmark,Finland, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malawi, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa,Sweden, the UK and the USA. Organizations present were the UNAIDS Secretariat, UNDP, WHO, the WorldBank, OECD/Development Assistance Committee, ICASO and GNP+.9UNAIDS (2004). Press Release, 25 April. Geneva, UNAIDS.10UNAIDS (2005). Making the Money Work Through Greater UN Support for AIDS Responses. The 2007–2007Consolidated UN Technical Support Plan for AIDS. Geneva, UNAIDS.