Statement by Ambassador Richard T. Miller, U.S. Representative to the Economic and Social Council, in consideration of Item 7(h): Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), in the Economic and Social Council

As Delivered

Mr. President,

We are at a transformational moment in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Since the 2001 Declaration of Commitment, the world has begun to respond with resources, political will, and, most importantly, coordinated action on the ground to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

At the recently concluded Twentieth UNAIDS Program Coordinating Board (PCB) meeting, the United States joined the PCB Bureau as Vice-Chair. We look forward to working with Member States, civil society, and other stakeholders through the PCB to improve UNAIDS’ effectiveness and to create a better life for the tens of millions of people living with or affected by AIDS.

In this fourth year of President Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the United States is supporting individuals, communities and nations to take control of the pandemic and thus take control of their lives through bilateral programs and through multilateral organizations, such as UNAIDS, Global Fund, and others. The President announced on May 30 his intention to work with Congress to extend the Emergency Plan, doubling the initial U.S. commitment to the global fight against HIV/AIDS to $30 billion for five additional years beginning in 2009 and bringing the 10 year commitment to over 48 billion USD. The leaders of the G8 summit in Heiligendamm have now pledged to scale up resources for HIV/AIDS to $60 billion in the coming years and also to adopt specific, numerical targets in terms of individuals served. The specificity of these goals is a major step toward accountability.

Beyond dollars, the Emergency Plan reflects the heart of a new approach to development that rejects the old and failed donor-recipient approach and replaces it with partnerships. All of our collective progress has been accomplished through the power of partnerships. The U.S. Government has been privileged to partner with the many national and local governmental and non-governmental organizations, including civil society, faith- and community-based organizations and the private sector, as well as international organizations to achieve these impressive results. Eighty-three percent of our partners are local organizations.

UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot has been eloquent in promoting the need to "Know your epidemic." The United States is fully supportive of this emphasis and what it means for empowering national governments and communities. We must be aware of what is driving the epidemics in communities, countries and regions, and plan prevention strategies accordingly.

Knowing our epidemics means tailoring our responses based on whether a given country has a concentrated or generalized epidemic, for example. These past years have shown that where accurate information is provided, personal responsibility is taking hold. Data from generalized epidemics - Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, South Africa, and others build on previous data from Uganda showing that many young people will chose safer behaviors.

Next, we must recognize that the crisis in human resources for health is limiting the ability of many of the hardest-hit countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, to scale up HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment.

Human resource needs must be built into national strategies and plans for scale-up, and together we must support those plans. We will also continue working with the World Health Organization and others to promote potential solutions like “task-shifting,” which moves health care tasks from higher-skilled to lower-skilled health care workers.

UNAIDS has successfully developed a new model of multilateral coordination and innovation. In that spirit, we are pleased with the recently concluded UNAIDS Program Coordinating Board’s (PCB) decisions surrounding reform of the PCB and the resolve to continual improvement of its working processes.