UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

UNAIDS The First 10 Years34Kastberg recalled that it was easier to achieve coordination on the issue of governancebetween Member States and civil society than within the UN family. Finally, at the third meetingof the CCO in Vienna, later in February, the Cosponsors agreed to work within the frameworkproposed by ECOSOC. The PCB, not the CCO, would be the decision-making body.The composition of the PCB was agreed through ECOSOC among the permanent missions inNew York. Piot recalled: “There were people running around with a pocket calculator workingout membership according to regions”. It was eventually decided that 22 states would berepresented on the Board: five each from Africa and Asia, two from Eastern Europe, three fromLatin America and the Caribbean, and seven from ‘Western Europe and other States’.Piot’s major battle over the PCB was to ensure representation of nongovernmental organizations,but there was strong opposition to this from a few countries. Eventually, it was agreedthat five nongovernmental organizations would participate as non-voting members, likethe Cosponsors. In early July 1995, ECOSOC adopted a resolution inviting five nongovernmentalorganizations to take part in the new PCB, three of which were to come from middleandlow-income countries. The selection would be carried out by the nongovernmentalorganizations themselves. This was an historic decision. UNAIDS was, and still is, the onlyUN body with nongovernmental organization representatives on its governing body.UNAIDS was,and still is,the only UNbody withnongovernmentalorganizationrepresentatives onits governing body.It was very clear to Piot that working with Cosponsors would not be easy: “… in essence,no one in the UN system wanted the new programme to happen”. He needed allies andfriends with whom to discuss strategy and policies. In February 1995, somewhat bruisedby the battles over governance, he quietly organized a private ‘brainstorming’ retreat withsome of these friends: “I needed a clandestine place away from the rest of the UN system”.A telephone call to Seth Berkley, who was then working for the Rockefeller Foundation andis now President of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, brought the offer of the useof their centre at Bellagio, on Lake Como, Italy, at no cost and with funding for the wholeweekend meeting. This meeting set a valuable precedent, allowing Piot to retreat fromtime to time with close allies to discuss strategy and tactics.The group at the first meeting included Berkley; Jean Baptiste Brunet, responsible for AIDSat the French Ministry of Health at the time; Jim Curran, then Director, Office of HIV/ AIDS atthe United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Joseph Decosas, a Canadianscientist; Susan Holck, seconded from WHO’s GPA to the Joint Programme; NoerineKaleeba, founder of The Aids Support Organisation (TASO) in Uganda and a well-knownactivist; Hans Moerkerk, the Dutch diplomat who was the last Chair of GPA’s ManagementCommittee; Rob Moodie, a public health specialist and doctor from Australia who hadbeen a consultant to GPA; Roland Msiska, then Manager of the National AIDS Programmein Zambia; Werasit Sittitrai, a Thai AIDS activist with the Red Cross, and Winston Zulu, aZambian AIDS activist living with HIV.