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Policy and advocacy

The policy and advocacy work of the International HIV/AIDS Alliance (the Alliance) aims to influence and improve the HIV policies of international policy-makers and donors. We want our experiences, and the lessons we have learnt about successful responses to HIV, to change the way that major 'players' respond to the pandemic.

Recently, unprecedented opportunities to develop the global response to the HIV pandemic have presented themselves. The UK Government has played a central role in shaping this response as President of the G8 and the European Union. In the autumn of this year, governments and civil society will have assessing their contributions to the achievement (or otherwise) of the Millennium Development Goals and reviewed progress towards the implementation of the 2001 UNGASS Declaration.

In a speech during his African tour Mr Brown, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, said, "I believe that the generation that provides the finance to combat, cure and eradicate the world's deadliest disease of today and today the world's least curable disease HIV/AIDS will rightly earn the title 'the great generation'.” The Alliance’s policy work will continue to press for this adequate level of global funding and ensure that the funding mechanisms put in place will work to support action on HIV on the ground.

Partnerships with policy-making institutions

The Alliance works in partnership with many policy-making bodies, governments and donors. Examples of our partnerships at policy level include serving as a collaborating centre for the joint UNAIDS programme and working with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria as members of the Northern and Communities non-governmental organisation delegations to the Board. We have a Programme Partnership Agreement with the UK Government’s Department for International Development and our policy work with the European Union is supported by the Ford Foundation, New York.

The European Union

The Stop AIDS Alliance (SAA) is a joint project of the Alliance and Stop Aids Now! Netherlands. This project aims to influence and strengthen the response of the European Union’s aid programme for HIV in developing countries. The strategy of the SAA involves building strong relationships with key European institutions in order to maintain and secure HIV as a high priority on the political agenda. Central to our work is support for a collaborative and co-ordinated response from the Brussels-based non-governmental organisation sector.

Sexual and reproductive health rights and HIV

Sexual and reproductive health rights programmes can provide an important pathway to HIV prevention and care, and vice versa. Despite recognition of common ground, opportunities to strengthen programming are often missed or limited by institutional barriers, competition for limited resources, donors’ agendas and funding conditionality, or lack of evidence to support effective approaches for integration. The Alliance works to promote greater integration at a policy level, based on learning and evidence from our research and programme work.

Development mainstreaming and HIV

To scale up the response to the pandemic, there needs to be increased integration at a policy and programme level between the broader development agenda and HIV. The Alliance has been working on mainstreaming issues to ensure that HIV is appropriately integrated into broader development policies, such as the European Union’s development policy 2006–2011. This area of work includes a focus on the two-way impact between vertical HIV programming and the wider health system. One concrete, programme-based piece of work is in Zambia, where we are developing evidence for how the role out of anti-retroviral treatment impacts on other development and health priorities.

Financing systems

This area of work focuses on the global financial architecture for HIV funding. It includes assessments of existing funding mechanisms, analysis of current donor funding patterns, and the role of horizontal and vertical financing mechanisms. An example of this work is an assessment of the World Bank’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers to examine whether they are an effective and appropriate instrument for supporting community action on AIDS. This area of work includes issues such as human capacity and the technical support necessary to implement appropriate HIV programmes.

HIV and governance

The Alliance worked in partnership with the Institute for Public Policy Research to support their work with the UK Government’s Commission for Africa on 'Tackling state failure and promoting more effective governance in Africa’. The aim of this work is to address 'the coherence agenda' - the extent to which the policies of developed countries (particularly the G8) may be hindering rather than helping to tackle state failure, and achieve better governance and more effective states in Africa. It looks at issues like aid, arms exports, HIV, investment and business regulation, corruption and revenue transparency. The Alliance contributed to the analysis on HIV in the policy report.

Contact the policy team at the Alliance

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