UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

UNAIDS The First 10 Years248By December 2007, around 2.3 million people were being treated 11 . In addition to its Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Programme for Africa (MAP), the World Bank launched a US$ 60 millionTreatment Acceleration Project in 2004-2005, with initial grants to Burkina Faso, Ghana andMozambique. The World Bank had committed more than $2.5 billion to the responce toAIDS by the end of 2005.Making the money work in countriesSince 2002, the UNAIDS Secretariat in partnership with its Cosponsors has focused morestrongly on country-level work. Piot wrote to UNAIDS staff at the start of 2007: ‘We willcontinue our transformation from an organization focusing on advocacy to mobilize againstthe AIDS epidemic to a field oriented organization that focuses on UN system support toimplementation of AIDS programmes (“making the money work”) while continuing the everneeded advocacy and policy activities’.The numbers of staff in countries have increased and the UNAIDS Country Coordinators areworking as full members of the UN Country Teams. In several countries, partners such asdonors and civil society report a stronger UN presence.UNAIDS developed the “Three Ones” policy, aiming to harmonize and align the work of allAIDS players in countries. Only through succeeding with this change in international developmentpractice – ensuring that the money is where it is needed – will countries be able to‘make the money work’ effectively and fulfil the commitments made at UNGASS.UNAIDS monitoring and evaluation staff now form the largest evaluation force in the worldfor AIDS (and one of the largest in development in general). They play a key role in steeringthe response worldwide, because they provide, from a variety of sources, the accurate datathat form the basis for effective planning and implementation.UNAIDS as a pathfinder to United Nations reformFrom its inception, UNAIDS has been a natural pathfinder for UN reform. When the UN wasfounded more than 60 years ago, the world was a very different place and the UN’s systemswere, to some extent, established to respond to different global concerns.In the early days of the epidemic, AIDS challenged the way the UN worked and the aimof creating UNAIDS was to change this. UNAIDS, it has often been said, was not about‘business as usual’. The mandate for the new Programme was to provide leadership on theglobal response and policy, and to ensure coordination and coherence across the UN systemin responding to the AIDS epidemic. It was seen as essential to maximize the collective effectivenessof the cosponsoring agencies.11WHO (2007).