Response to announcement of cancellation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

The UNAIDS Reference Group on HIV and Human Rights released a statement and recommendations on the Global Fund and crisis on HIV funding, in response to the November 2011 announcement of the cancellation of the 11^th round of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The Global Fund has been instrumental in moving the health and human rights goals of the global HIV response forward. The cancellation of the 11^th round of funding comes at a time of worldwide financial crisis and the Global Fund’s financial difficulties echo the current economic climate. However, this crisis could not come at a worst time, as science and medicine are continually improving and developing the tools for success in response to HIV, but lack adequate funding.

In the statement, the UNAIDS Reference Group on HIV and Human Rights condemns the reduction of, or failure to honour, pledged support to the Global Fund by donor governments and considers this to be an abrogation of legally grounded human rights obligations.  The Reference Group also believes that, while the Global Fund and other multi and bi-lateral efforts are necessary to ensure that sufficient resources are available to fulfill the right to health, governments of many low-and middle-income countries are not meeting human rights obligations to their people, by failing to budget adequately for health. The Global Fund and other forms of international assistance are indispensible, but are not an excuse for developing countries to underfund health generally and HIV specifically.

The global HIV funding crisis comes at a moment when rights-based approaches to HIV are threatened, perhaps more than ever before. The knowledge that attaining high coverage of antiretroviral treatment can also reduce HIV transmission in a given population — “treatment as prevention” — highlights the need for a dramatic scale-up of HIV testing as a step toward treatment. But if human rights protection is not a central and well-funded part of testing strategies, a rapid scale-up of HIV testing can lead to widespread infringements of privacy rights, autonomy and the right to information without adequate diagnosis or linkage to HIV care for those who test positive.

The World YWCA fully supports the UNAIDS Reference Group on HIV and Human Rights’ statement. In a world where the majority of people living with HIV are women and especially those of reproductive age, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa; where the majority of care givers are women and girls; and where women and girls have the highest vulnerability and risk to infection, it is clear that any reduction in funding will have a disproportionate impact on women. As a result, women will be unable to access quality and comprehensive services, including SRHR for women living with HIV. The burden of care will also increase and shift to households, which in many instances are already poor.

As outlined in the World YWCA Strategic Framework 2012-2015, the YWCA, as a movement, advocates for the promotion and protection of women and young women’s sexual and reproductive health rights in the context of HIV and AIDS,. Furthermore, the YWCA Movement

works to ensure women can access rights-based programmes and services that comprehensively address sexual and reproductive health rights, HIV and violence against women. In the last 20 years it has been providing leadership in communities and therefore affirms that health is a right, and that governments must invest resources and be accountable.

The UNAIDS Reference Group on HIV and Human Rights was established in 2002 to advise the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS on all matters relating to HIV and human rights.