Frontline AIDS endorses ‘transformational’ new Global AIDS Strategy
© Gemma Taylor for Frontline AIDS
Frontline AIDS has presented the following statement at the UNAIDS PCB meeting on the proposed Global AIDS Strategy 2021-2026.
The Frontline AIDS partnership began our engagement with this strategy development process last summer, when we convened focus group discussions attended by over 70 representatives of grassroots, national and global organisations.
Some of the messages that we heard in those discussions focused on ending the crisis in HIV prevention, ensuring ambitious targets on support for community-led responses, the need for higher priority and increased investment in innovation, particularly around social enablers, and championing approaches which address gender inequality and gender-based violence as the key barrier to women’s access to prevention and treatment services. We thank the organisations who took part in focus groups for their participation and for the courage that they show every day in their work on the frontline of the HIV response.
Today, along with 13 of our partners, we are pleased to endorse the new Global AIDS Strategy, because it boldly addresses many of these issues. We welcome the central focus on inequalities. This is a transformational approach and if we work together to deliver it, we could finally be on course to ending AIDS.
In our focus groups, many participants also called for a bolder and more clearly articulated role for UNAIDS in working with civil society to push for progress on the issues that are hardest to address – criminalisation of key populations, harmful gender norms, comprehensive sexuality education, harm reduction. Now, we hope to see a strong civil society engagement in the development of the new Unified Budget, Results and Accountability Framework (UBRAF) to shape this ambitious new role and contribute to the accountability mechanisms.
We also look forward to working with UNAIDS and all PCB members to ensure that the brave commitments in the new strategy are firmly reflected in the upcoming High Level Meeting on AIDS and its political declaration.
This statement was developed by Frontline AIDS together with:
Alive Medical Services, Uganda
Coalition Plus / Kimirina, Ecuador
Colectivo Amigos Contro el Sida (CAS), Guatemala
Development Agenda for Girls and Women in Africa Network
Drug Free and Preventive Healthcare Organization (DAPHO), Nigeria
Drug Harm Reduction Advocacy Network (DHRAN), Nigeria
GayLatino
Instituto para el Desarrollo Humano, Bolivia
People Against Suffering, Oppression and Poverty, South Africa
