Alliance-led Global Fund consultation in India calls for strengthened civil society engagement

27 May 2005

A national civil society consultation on the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, organised by Alliance India and attended by approximately 50 civil society representatives has set out a series of recommendations to improve the engagement of civil society in Global Fund processes.

Key recommendations that emerged during the consultation included:

  • Promoting consultation with a wider cross-section of civil society organisations across India.
  • Ensuring adequate and effective representation of civil society in the country coordinating mechanism (CCM), and capacity building for this.
  • Developing a new, transparent and inclusive selection process for civil society representatives in the CCM, including well defined selection criteria.
  • Representation of vulnerable groups, including people living with HIV/AIDS, sex workers, injecting drug users and men who have sex with men.
  • Ensuring the CCM has a clear communication strategy to inform and engage civil society.
  • Implementing a transparent process for proposal development, submission and selection, including notification of outcomes to all applicants.
  • Equipping State AIDS Control Societies with adequate technical capacity/resources and clear guidelines to support effective proposal development and the engagement of civil society organisations.
  • Making resources and technical support available to civil society organisations and consortia to develop project proposals.
  • Grant flow and disbursement should be made transparent.
  • Giving the health department or an expert committee responsibility for developing proposals on TB and malaria. State AIDS Control Societies as gatekeepers do not include malaria and TB, as they are not equipped to develop proposals on these.

Participants representing approximately 40 civil society organisations formed a working group to take forward these recommendations and promote engagement with a wider cross-section of civil society organisations across India. A full report of the meeting will be widely disseminated by the end of May 2005.