First draft of the Political Declaration for the UNGASS
Review Meeting (II)
26 April 2006
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[Mods note: Please find below, the first draft of Political
Declaration, which has been submitted to the UN Member States by the co-chairs of
the UNGASS Review Meeting. The negotiations among the Member States
will then take place to finalise the final Political Declaration before
the 31 May 2006.]
Despite the list of civil society recommendations for the Political
Declaration (put together by ICASO) that was sent to the co-chairs for
consideration to be reflected in the first official draft, a number of
key issues were not included in this draft. The Civil Society
Coalition, among other key UNGASS Review lobbying groups, is encouraging civil
society organisations to work with their governments to ensure that the
final Political Declaration reflects the civil society
recommendations.
Members can find the civil sociey recommendations posting at
http://www.healthdev.org/eforums/cms/showMessage.asp?msgid=11243 in the
forum archives.]
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We, the representatives of Governments participating in the
comprehensive review of the progress achieved in realizing the targets
set out in the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS on 31 May and 1
June 2006 and the High- Level Meeting on 2 June 2006,
1. Reaffirm our commitment to implement fully the Declaration of
Commitment on HIV/AIDS adopted at the twenty-sixth special session of the
General Assembly in 2001 and to achieve the Millennium Development Goal 6
to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015, and also to implement the
2005 World Summit Outcome that calls for the full
implementation of the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS and to
developing and implementing a package for HIV prevention, treatment
and care with the aim of coming as close as possible to the goal of
universal access to treatment by 2010 for all those who need it;
2. Acknowledge that national and international efforts have resulted in
important progress being made since 2001 in the areas of funding,
expanding access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and in mitigating
the impact of AIDS, and in reducing HIV prevalence in a small but
growing number of countries, but remain deeply concerned by the overall
expansion and feminization of the epidemic as well as the increasing number
of children affected and orphaned by HIV/AIDS;
3. Recognize that HIV/AIDS, with its inter-generational and borderless
nature, poses an exceptional challenge to development, progress, and
stability of our respective societies and the world at large;
4. Further recognize that a quarter of century into the epidemic, the
global AIDS response stands at a crossroads and that, with our renewed
political will and sustained commitment and concerted efforts from all
stakeholders at all levels, and with sufficient resources, we would be
able to bring about the beginning of the end of the epidemic;
5. Acknowledge the centrality of HIV/AIDS in achieving the Millennium
Development Goals and, therefore, emphasize the need to strengthen
policy and programme linkages and coordination between HIV/AIDS and
national development strategies, including poverty reductions
strategies;
6. Undertake, where appropriate, to include the impacts of HIV/AIDS in
the core indicators for measuring progress in implementing national
development and poverty reduction plans;
7. Commit ourselves to undertake a national-driven, comprehensive,
sustainable and full-scale response, linking together prevention,
treatment, care and impact mitigation, and with full participation of people
living with HIV, most affected communities, civil society and the private
sector;
8. Commit ourselves to scale up and refine efforts to alleviate the
impacts of HIV/AIDS, to address the spiralling costs for HIV treatment and
intensify prevention efforts to ensure an HIV-free future
generation;
9. Commit ourselves to remove, where needed, legal, regulatory or other
barriers that block access to effective HIV prevention interventions,
commodities and services such as condoms, harm
reduction and other prevention measures;
10. Agree to promote at all levels access to HIV/AIDS education,
voluntary testing, counselling and related services, in a social and legal
environment that is supportive of and safe for confidential testing and
voluntary disclosure of HIV status;
11. Also agree to increase substantially our efforts in providing
antiretroviral treatment coverage and prevention services to HIV- infected
pregnant women in order to more effectively decrease the
rates of mother-to-child transmission;
12. Commit ourselves to intensify our efforts towards the development
of new prevention technologies, particularly vaccines and
microbicides, that will enable sustainability of commitment to
universal access for prevention, treatment and care;
13. Undertake to expand greatly our capacity to deliver comprehensive
HIV/AIDS programmes in ways that strengthen existing national health
and social systems, including by integrating AIDS intervention into
programmes for primary health care, mother and child health, sexual and
reproductive health, tuberculosis, nutrition, orphans and vulnerable
children, as well as formal and informal education;
14. Also undertake to adopt national plans and strategies or
large-scale measures to strengthen human resources to provide HIV prevention,
care, treatment and support, and to enable health,
education and social systems to mount an effective HIV/AIDS response;
15. Commit ourselves and call on the Global Fund to fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria, the World Bank and other international donors to
provide needed resources required to implement measures, in particular
those in low- income countries highly affected by AIDS, that aims at
strengthening human resources for health systems, including alternatives and
simplified service delivery models and the expansion of community-
level provisions of health and social services;
16. Emphasize the need to strengthen policy and programme linkages and
coordination between HIV/AIDS and sexual and reproductive health and
their inclusion in national development plans;
17. Pledge to provide the highest-level commitment to ensure that
credible and evidence-based national HIV/AIDS plan should be fully funded
without the imposition of conditionalities, and that it shall be
implemented with full transparency and effectiveness;
18. Commit ourselves to reduce the global HIV/AIDS resource gap through
greater domestic and international funding, including through the
meeting by developed countries of the target of 0.7% of GNP as ODA to
developing countries, to enable countries to have access to predictable and
sustainable financial resources and to ensure that
international funding align with national HIV/AIDS plans and
strategies;
19. Further commit to securing sufficient resources, estimated to be
between 18 billion and 20 billion US dollars by 2008 from domestic and
international sources, to finance rapidly scaled up HIV prevention,
treatment and care programmes;
20. Further commit to support and strengthen existing financial
mechanisms, especially the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and
Malaria, including through provision of funds in a sustained and predictable
manner, whilst generating additional funds through innovative
approaches;
21. Agree to remove major barriers – in pricing, tariffs and trade,
regulatory policy, and research and development, to intensify access to
affordable quality HIV prevention commodities, medicines and
diagnostics;
22. Commit ourselves to encourage bilateral, regional and international
efforts in promoting bulk procurement, price negotiations, and
voluntary licensing to lower prices for HIV prevention and treatment
commodities;
23. Agree to employ the flexibility in the World Trade Organization's
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights to
increase further affordability of commodities that are available and that
will be developed in the future, including production of generic
anti-retroviral drugs, microbicides, vaccines, diagnostics and drugs for
AIDS-related infections in ways that strengthen health care delivery;
24. Pledge to eliminate, through legislation, policies, education and
national and international public awareness campaigns, HIV/AIDS
associated stigma and discrimination, and to protect and promote the HIV/AIDS
related human rights of people living with HIV/AIDS, women and children
and people in vulnerable groups, and ensure that they are centrally
involved in all aspects of HIV/AIDS responses;
25. Agree to increase capacities of women and adolescent girls to
protect themselves from the risk of HIV infection, principally through the
provision of health care and services, including reproductive
health programmes, and through prevention education that promote gender
equality;
26. Commit ourselves to take all necessary measures to create an
enabling environment for the empowerment of women and to strengthen
their economic independence and to protect and promote their full
enjoyment of all human rights and fundament al freedoms in order to enable
them to protect themselves form HIV infection;
27. Also commit ourselves to undertake in an inclusive manner to set in
2006 national targets reflecting the urgent need to scale up
significantly HIV prevention, care, treatment and support in order to come as
close as possible to universal access by 2010;
28. Call on the UN system, especially the Joint United Nations
Programme on AIDS, to work with the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and
Malaria, donors and other stakeholders in supporting national efforts
to achieve the targets above;
29. Encourage Governments, international donors, United Nations
agencies, civil society, communities most affected by HIV/AIDS and other
stakeholders to work closely together to ensure mutual
accountability at all levels through participatory review of AIDS
responses;
30. Request the Secretary-General of the United Nations, through the
UNAIDS, to include in his annual report to the General Assembly on the
status of implementation of the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS
in accordance with resolution S-20/2 of 27 June 2001, the progress
made towards universal access;
31. Commit to reviewing, at the General Assembly, in 2008 and 2011,
progress of the AIDS response, with particular reference to the
Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS and the movement towards universal access
to HIV prevention, care, treatment and support.