UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

UNAIDS The First 10 Years54Tony Lisle was one of the first CPAs. He had previously managed Save the ChildrenFund and Australia’s AusAID-funded health and social development programme in theLao People’s Democratic Republic for five years. After an intense, three-week training inGeneva with other new recruits, he was sent to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. “Itwas still very much the transition period from GPA, this new programme called UNAIDSthat no one quite understood”. His experience was not unusual. He was provided witha ‘shoebox’ office on the second floor of the United Nations Development Programme(UNDP) building, a very dilapidated wooden desk and chair, an ancient computer and golfballprinter – all fairly dysfunctional. He vividly remembers the first time he had to write amemo; as he started to print it the ball of the printer flew off and that was that! CPAs weresupposed to receive functioning resources from the Cosponsors.More troublingly, Lisle had to contend with outright hostility from the Head of one cosponsoringagency. Every other member of the Theme Group welcomed him and worked withhim but this one person refused to meet him and discouraged the Ministry of Health officialsfrom doing so. Lisle was unable to work with them for the first three months. So one dayhe calmly went to the office of this Cosponsor and told the secretary that if necessary hewould stay there all night, until her boss met with him. Finally the meeting did happen at6pm. but it was made clear to Lisle that he was quite the wrong person for the job and thatclosing GPA was a crime.George Tembo was UNAIDS’ first CPA in Africa, in Kenya, from 1996. Previously he hadbeen Medical Officer in Uganda for WHO’s GPA. He saw the involvement of civil societyas paramount. “People didn’t realize we weren’t like GPA, that we were working beyondthe Ministry of Health. More importantly, we were mobilizing civil society and working withNGOs and including people living with HIV. I always used to explain – we were giving avoice to the voiceless”.Tembo experienced fewer practical difficulties than Lisle in the Lao People’s DemocraticRepublic. The Resident Coordinator “really understood the concept of UN reform and thatUNAIDS was … moving that agenda forward, so I was given quite some prominence”. Andhe had an adequate office. However, it was not an easy country in which to work becauseat that time there was considerable denial about HIV: “negative talk about condoms” andchurches were burning literature on the epidemic.One of the hardest tasks for the first group of CPAs was defining their role and that ofUNAIDS. “It was all so new, we hadn’t really focused on our niche, on where we had acomparative advantage”, explained Tembo. “At that time people liked to use the termthat we were building our boat while … sailing at the same time”.