UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

UNAIDS The First 10 Years190tively – particularly in those countries receivingsubstantial US aid. However, most donoragencies have not yet included promotion ofthe “Three Ones” as a performance indicatorfor their staff.Putting the “Three Ones”into actionIn March 2005, a high-level meeting took placein London on ‘Making the money work: the“Three Ones” in action’, involving representatives of governments, donors and internationalorganizations. The meeting was co-hosted by the UK Department for InternationalDevelopment (DFID), France, the USA and UNAIDS. Unfortunately, attempts at harmonizingthe meeting were to some extent undermined by the behaviour of several groups.For some months before the meeting, a reference group of experts, brought together bythe UNAIDS Secretariat, had worked on two models for future resource needs. As AchmatDangor, then Director of Advocacy, Communication and Leadership at UNAIDS, explained,one model described the funding that would be needed to achieve the level of coveragerequired by the UNGASS goals – “the aspirational goal which is the maximum amount ofmoney available with few constraints”.Making the Money Workmeeting in London, March2005, co-chaired by USGlobal AIDS CoordinatorAmbassador Randall L. Tobias,UNAIDS Executive DirectorPeter Piot, UK Secretaryof State for InternationalDevelopment Hilary Benn, andFrance Minister delegate forCooperation, Development andFrancophony Xavier Darcos.Astonleigh StudioThe second model described what resources could realistically be spent, taking into accountlow-income countries’ limited ability to implement programmes. These papers were circulatedto the three donor co-hosts of the meeting and the Cosponsors and recognized later that itshould have been more widely circulated.As Dangor explained, a debate on the substantial issues of resource needs for AIDS and oncountries’ capacity for implementation was going to be difficult: “The miracle is that we werestill able to extract one vital thing, and that was a mandate to pursue country-level harmonization,because it gave birth to the Global Task Team.”Paul De Lay, from the UNAIDS Secretariat’ Evaluation Department and now Director ofEvidence, Monitoring and Policy, said that many UNAIDS staff perceived the meeting as a realchallenge: “There was a lot of hostility from all different groups. Some of our own Cosponsorsseemed to be turning against us, and some in civil society were turning against us…also, wecan argue and fight all we want in an internal forum but not in such a public, destructive way”.Others felt donors had not been supportive.