Executive Board of UNDP/UNFPA/UNOPS: Item 3 - Follow-up to UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board meeting

Muchas gracias señor Presidente, muy buenas tardes.

Mr. President, Excellencies,

I am delivering this statement on behalf of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Latvia, the Republic of Moldova, Montenegro, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Romania, and my own country, Luxembourg.

First of all we would like to thank Mr. Marcos Neto and Ms. Diene Keita for the update on UNDP’s and UNFPA’s contributions to the HIV/AIDS response. We also thank Ms. Angeli Achrekar for her update from Geneva on the Joint Programme.

We welcome the significant gains in the global fight against HIV and AIDS outlined in the report. We are now seeing the lowest number of new HIV infections in decades, and the number of AIDS-related deaths has significantly declined.

Even so, widening inequalities and reduced funding constitute important roadblocks in achieving our common goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. Enabling legal environments are critical for addressing the inequalities fuelling the HIV epidemic. Without such enabling legal environments, evidence-based programming cannot reach the populations most in need. By collectively combating persistent stigma and discrimination and ensuring equal access to information and education, we address the attitudes and social behaviours that hinder progress and result in more infections.

The deteriorating human rights environment globally also needs to be addressed with urgency. Increasing attacks on human rights, particularly the rights of minority groups, is a clear obstacle to ensuring consistent progress on effective measures to help eliminate the spread of HIV and AIDS.

Structural political, legal, cultural and social barriers, shrinking civic space and inadequate investment in programming are fundamental constraints to our progress. On the UNAIDS Board we have therefore urged national governments to show strong national ownership towards reducing harmful legal and social barriers and increasing domestic funding for HIV. We support UNAIDS’s efforts to work with governments towards developing national HIV Response Sustainability Roadmaps.

Gender inequality, sexual and gender-based violence, stigma and discrimination, the denial of sexual and reproductive health and rights, and social, economic, and gender inequalities, also put key populations at heightened risk of HIV infection.

Progress is particularly stagnant for key populations, including transgender people, who face multiple and intersecting inequalities. Transgender women are 20 times more likely to contract HIV than women in the general population. For this reason, we welcomed the thematic session of the fifty-third meeting of the Programme Coordinating Board, which highlighted the huge challenges faced by key populations with a specific focus on transgender people. On this note, we also wish to congratulate Kenya for hosting the 55^th Programme Coordinating Board and for arranging a series of informative field visits for participants in Nairobi.

We welcome the increased collaboration between UNFPA, UNDP and other UN agencies based on their comparative advantages, especially efforts to:

• Promote gender equality and address gender-based violence through national accountability frameworks, national gender assessment plans and the integration of human rights into HIV/AIDS policies and strategies.
• Foster innovative approaches to engaging young people on sexual and reproductive health and rights.
• Integrate services for key populations into national HIV strategic plans and health sector HIV strategies.
   

This year, the NY-based agencies will be formulating their Next Strategic Plans. In UNDP’s current Strategic Plan, the agency committed to scale up the work on HIV and AIDS, including through: reducing the inequalities; strengthening governance; and supporting efforts to build resilient and sustainable health systems, including integrated HIV prevention, treatment and care. What are the lessons learned through implementing the current Strategic Plan? How will the lessons inform UNDP’s and UNFPA’s next Strategic Plans, within their existing resources?

With the global HIV funding landscape becoming increasingly challenging, how are UNDP and UNFPA planning on keeping a sustained engagement up to and beyond 2030 on the HIV/AIDS agenda? How are UNDP and UNFPA addressing the issue of the “persistent inadequacy of core funding”?

We would also be interested to learn more about UNDP’s and UNFPA’s approach to providing support and technical assistance to countries adversely affected by conflicts, crises linked to climate change, and deteriorating human rights environments.

2025 will be a crucial year for the Joint Programme. We are looking forward to extensive discussions, especially with co-sponsors, on the Joint Programme’s ‘operating model’, on the Global Aids Strategy 2026-2030 and the Unified Budget Results and Accountability Framework. How will UNDP and UNFPA be engaged in the drafting of the new Global AIDS Strategy?

This was our last question, Mr. President. I will conclude now. While the fight against HIV/AIDS is far from over, we have seen significant progress. To sustain these gains, we need a fit-for-purpose and resilient Joint Programme focused on supporting the implementation of a new Global AIDS strategy, with effective coordination and collaboration to maximise impact. Therefore, we urge all UNAIDS co-sponsors to be fully engaged in this process.

For an effective multisectoral approach to end AIDS, we must all maintain our ambition and sustain all efforts.

Thank you.