UNAIDS Evaluation and Gender on the Agenda

Today the discussion started with the Second Independent Evaluation of UNAIDS, as we ran out of time in the meeting yesterday. Although there is a new Division of Labour (DOL) amongst the UN agencies in relation to who will be the lead agent or convener on the implementation of the UNAIDS priority areas, it is still unclear how this new DOL will work better. It was stressed in the discussions on the floor that all stakeholders must be involved in the implementation, decision making and monitoring of the activities. I appreciate the ambitious UNAIDS strategy, one of the recommendations implemented from the Second Independent Evaluation, though I am interested to see how this will affect us on the ground. The mention of key populations and human rights in the UNAIDS Strategy will really affect my work as my organisation works directly with these population groups in care, support, advocacy and prevention.

I was interested to hear about the work UNAIDS will be doing to assess needs and build the capacity of their staff including training of the UCC’S and the RSTs on areas of human rights and gender equality. The UNAIDS made a commitment to move towards a single administrative of the secretariat and encourages on- going effort of the secretariat to use the administrative cost by seeking the most effective cost provision of the service. With the leadership of a core working group, which consists of civil society, UNAIDS, government, People living with HIV an assessment for capacity building will be done in a number of countries.

The next agenda item was a discussion on Gender Sensitivity of the AIDS response and interventions from the floor requested a stronger linkage between women and girls sexual and reproductive health and HIV. Interventions from the NGO delegation stressed the importance for doing research on the female condoms. NGO’s requested UNAIDS to ensure indicator and budgetary allocating in relation to outcome areas of the meeting. The needs of women and girls on the country level need to be met especially those needs that are in line with the UNAIDS Agenda for Accelerated Country Action for Women, Girls, Gender Equality and HIV (the Agenda). Meaningful partnerships such as UNAIDS, national stakeholders and civil society was also highlighted. In terms of reporting, best practice models on the collaboration between UNAIDS and civil society to be documented in order to better understand and address HIV specific needs of women and girls, including the promotion and protection of their rights. As part of the NGO interventions, a progress report on the achievement of the implementation of the Agenda was requested to be presented at the 28th PCB meeting. This comprehensive report is to highlight specific outcomes for each country, which should demonstrate action and inform the work of the UNAIDS joint programme at country level. There was also an ask for a budget with core and supplemental costs dedicated to empowerment of woman and girls in the context of HIV.