The United Nations High Level Meeting on AIDS is in danger of watering down commitments to universal access to treatment, prevention and care and emerging with a toothless political declaration, according to civil society organisations engaged in last-minute lobbying today in New York.
"Three painful drafts later, the political declaration is in crisis. The irresponsible language being proposed by some countries is bordering on the criminal. We urgently need national delegations to stand up and realize just what is at stake, which is that 8,500 lives are being lost every day to the pandemic," said Aditi Sharma, International HIV/AIDS Campaign and Policy Coordinator for ActionAid International.
The UN meeting is supposed to reaffirm international commitment to ambitious targets set in 2005 at the Gleneagles G8 summit for universal access. The meeting was also intended to review progress against targets set at the 2001 UN General Assembly Special Session on AIDS (UNGASS).
A six month international consultation process led by UNAIDS, including dozens of country meetings and expert consultations, developed a detailed report to the UN General Assembly on the obstacles that needed to be overcome by the international community and national governments, with a detailed timetable for action.
However African civil society organisations are furious that negotiators from Gabon, Egypt and South Africa are refusing to follow the line agreed by the African Union summit on AIDS in May, which specified that 80% of those who need it should have access to antiretroviral therapy by 2010.
According to Sipho Mthathi, the head of the South African Treatment Action Campaign, “We hear they may reverse the progressive human rights language which is contained in the African position. There is also a move away from the regional targets set in Abuja earlier in May”.
Islamic countries are lobbying hard against various statements supporting the empowerment of women in the declaration. They also want to see any mention of `marginalised and vulnerable groups` - politically agreed code for men who have sex with men, sex workers and drug users - struck from the declaration. At the 2001 UN Special Session on AIDS a similar alliance, in partnership with the US, managed to remove any explicit mention of these groups from the declaration.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said yesterday:"We must work closely and constructively with those who have too
often been marginalized. We need to be realistic. If we are here to try and end the epidemic, we will not succeed by putting our heads in the sand and pretending these people do not exist or do not need help"
The US is unhappy about language committing national governments to removal of legal barriers that block access to effective HIV prevention and services. This could mean needle and syringe exchange, which the US government opposes vehemently. The document makes no mention of harm reduction for injecting drug users.
The US is also uncomfortable with a commitment to `evidence-based prevention strategies`, preferring the phrase `evidence-influenced prevention`.
Omololu Falobi of Journalists Against AIDS Nigeria said today: "The global fight against AIDS will not succeed unless governments commit to ambitious HIV treatment and prevention targets; support for the human rights of vulnerable populations such as sex workers, drug users, youth, and men who have sex with men; and embrace evidence-based HIV prevention. But these clear commitments are precisely what have currently been stripped out of the document."
The US, Japan, Australia and other governments are also refusing to include mention of the global AIDS funding gap in the Political Declaration. UNAIDS estimates that at least $23 billion is needed annually by 2010 to finance the fight against AIDS; yet the USA, Australia and Japan have rejected the inclusion of this target. The US is said to fear that any explicit recognition of the sums needed in the declaration will result in the expectation that the US will provide the majority of that money.