UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

UNAIDS The First 10 Years32denial and reluctance to face up to what is happening’. She might haveadded that it would also need someone who could contend with thesquabbles and conspiracies of some of the cosponsoring agencies, aswell as the demands, sometimes confl icting, of the donor countries.Selection of the Executive DirectorThe position of Executive Director was not advertised but nominationswere requested from Member States and civil society. The Task Forceand its Chair, Kastberg, were criticized for this method because it wasassumed there would be thousands of names. In fact, there were only14 nominations. A complicated process followed, overseen by Kastbergand other Task Force members, to ascertain the support behind eachproposed candidate and to consider their credentials. A shortlist was produced and sentto the missions in Geneva and to civil society organizations and networks involved throughthe Task Force but, needless to say, the politics surrounding the process were byzantineand Member States could not agree on one name.Peter Piot (second fromright) in Yambuku,Zaire during the Ebolaepidemic of 1976.UNAIDSEventually, it became clear that the strongest support, including that of Boutros-Ghali and,notably, civil society, was for Peter Piot, a Belgian scientist who had been Director of theDivision of Research and Intervention Development at WHO’s Global Programme on AIDS(GPA) since 1992. He had previously worked as Professor of Microbiology and Head of theDepartment of Infection and Immunity at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp. Hewas one of the first group of scientists to work on AIDS in Africa, had founded Projet Sidawith Jonathan Mann and had collaborated with various nongovernmental organizations.Piot was an eminent scientist with the right credentials including direct experience in lowincomecountries – and, as some colleagues added, he had fewer enemies than the othercandidates.Piot was not a typical UN bureaucrat. On joining GPA in 1992, he was surprised to discoverthat he enjoyed the international management of public health: “… it was a move fromstudying the problem to trying to do something about it on a larger scale”.There was no time for Piot to settle in to his new post. After a meeting with Boutros-Ghaliin December 1994, when he accepted the post, he returned to the CCO meeting where“they had started discussing pretty openly how they could undermine this new programmeand what we would and wouldn’t be allowed to do”.Stefano Bertozzi, combining the role of acting Head of GPA after Michael Merson’sdeparture as Director and working with Piot on designing the new Programme, recalls