UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

UNAIDS The First 10 Years80education through Imams: a spiritually motivated community effort in Uganda, described thework of a number of HIV prevention programmes run by or involving Imams, and addressedsensitive cultural issues such as empowering women and promoting condom use. The studyalso includes a number of illustrated case studies of positive people who are Muslim.In January 1999, UNAIDS signed a Memorandum Of Understanding with CaritasInternationalis, one of the world’s largest nongovernmental organization networks,comprising more than 160 Catholic development and social service organizations, designedto foster cooperation on a response to HIV at local, national and international levels.Despite inevitable disagreements with the Catholic Church over condom use, UNAIDS hasworked with this church at different levels over the past 10 years. The Executive Directorhas visited the Vatican three times and, as Almedal explained, the Secretariat has a goodworking relationship with the Papal Nuncio in Geneva. UNAIDS country-based staff alsowork with faith-based organizations. It was UNAIDS’ key role to work across all sectors, andto rise above the inevitable disagreements.Anne Winter, then Chief of Communications, explained: “An organization which has differentconstituencies has to act as a broker between them if it wants to achieve results; it has interestswhich are aligned with part of the agenda of each of those constituencies … in the case ofUNAIDS, its bottom line was to defend the interests of developing countries and those mostclosely affected by the epidemic. So with each group, UNAIDS had to work out the areas ofcommon interest, and how then they could work together to push the agenda forward. Butyou can’t broker the fundamental disputes. What you can do is, in a pragmatic way, brokerspecific consensus around very specific issues; that’s often the most you can do”.UNAIDS recognized theimportance of working withfaith-based organizations,who provide so muchsupport to HIV positivepeople and their families.Wat Pra Baht Nam PhuTemple in Lop Buri,Thailand, has beenconverted into a hospice forpeople living with AIDS. Amonk prays in front of bagsof cremated ashes not yetcollected by families.Corbis/ John Van Hasselt