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Looking Ahead

The Draft Political Declaration is now a General Assembly resolution.  The challenge for civil society is to insist upon accountability for what was agreed upon, and to engage with governments in the process of target setting and national reviews (in 2008 and 2010) called for in the Declaration.

Civil society was able to influence the drafting of the Political Declaration.  Amidst the moralizing clamor of the Meeting, civil society advocates  had their voices heard, and the result was a document that at least referred to vulnerable groups, women and youth, and included some human rights principles.⁶⁹  These victories can be the basis for larger strides in the fight against HIV.

UNAIDS has already begun looking ahead with five proposals for “moving towards universal access by 2010.”  By setting national targets, improving coordination and accountability, increasing engagement with civil society, planning for the US $20-23 billion funding requirements, and developing a four-year action plan, UNAIDS hopes to build upon the Political Declaration.  The proposal to engage with civil society refers to “promot[ing] the AIDS-related human rights of people living with HIV, women and children, and people in vulnerable groups.”⁷⁰ 

Civil society advocates must focus their efforts on the setting of national targets and the monitoring of progress.  UNAIDS has called for civil society participation.  Paragraph 20 of the Political Declaration does the same, asking for “full and active participation of people living with HIV, vulnerable groups, most affected communities, civil society and the private sector”.⁷¹  Civil society can use its engagement with countries during the target setting process to expand upon the Political Declaration’s references to human rights in order to reach the scope of protections needed to truly fight the HIV pandemic.

There are three concrete ways in which civil society can do this.  One, civil society advocates can work in the remainder of 2006 to identify structural barriers to human rights protections in particular countries.  One example would be identifying the legislative and regulatory barriers, such as the absence of laws on marital rape or discriminatory inheritance laws, that fail to protect women, girls, and orphans, or that criminalize homosexuality.  Calling for concrete action, such as the drafting of new, more protective laws, by 2008 would be a realistic position.  Two, civil society advocates can work with UNAIDS, donors and their respective governments to develop and expand upon assessment tools, including ones that measure budgetary allocations.  These assessment tools make the Political Declaration’s goals more concrete and measurable, which civil society can then point to if governments fail the assessments.  Civil society can call for assessment criteria to include goals for protecting human rights.  This step must involve calling on assessment tools and UNAIDS reports to become more gender-sensitive.  Assessment tools must also highlight the intersection of violence and discrimination against vulnerable groups and HIV/AIDS.  Three, civil society can link the Political Declaration with countries’ commitments under human rights treaties.  This step should include involvement in treaty reporting processes.  Civil society advocates could work with the official reporting process as well as the development of “shadow reports” and work with the media to report on possible failures of implementation.  For this reporting to work, civil society must first have helped to create concrete goals and specific measuring tools.

Civil society must now focus on putting the Political Declaration’s general claims into practical action by injecting a human rights perspective into the target-setting and monitoring process.  U.N. agencies should provide technical and financial assistance to local, national, regional and international civil society networks toward this end.  Finally, civil society should build upon and strengthen the coalitions amongst NGOs, faith-based organizations, youth and women’s groups, and HIV advocates that formed and mobilized prior to the High Level Meeting.  

Civil society and governments face the challenge of breathing content into the Political Declaration’s general references to human rights, seizing upon those rare moments when it enumerates relevant rights or protections, and reading the document so as to draw out the principles it only incompletely reflects.  For all its weaknesses, the Political Declaration at least gestures towards protecting human rights.  In this gesture, it has provided a basis for advocacy.