Draft Political Declaration

We agree with the EU proposition to replace para one to four. 

(5)Acknowledge the centrality of HIV/AIDS in achieving the millennium development goals and therefore emphasis the need to strengthen policy and program linkages and coordination between HIV/AIDS and national development strategies, including poverty reduction strategies;

(6)Undertake, where appropriate, to include the impact of HIV/AIDS in the core indicators for measuring progress in implementing national development and poverty reduction plans; 

(7) Commit ourselves to undertake a country driven comprehensive, sustainable and full scale response, linking prevention, treatment, and care and impact mitigation. This should include full participation by people living with HIV, affected communities, civil society and the private sector.

(8) Commit ourselves and scale up and refine efforts to mitigate the impact of HIV and AIDS, to address the unaffordable costs for HIV treatment and intensify prevention efforts to ensure an HIV free future generation.

(9) Commit ourselves to remove legal, regulatory, or other legislative barriers that block access to effective HIV preventive interventions, commodities and services such as condoms, harm reduction and other prevention measures.

(10) Agree to promote at all levels access to HIV education, and confidential voluntary testing and counseling 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 national efforts in providing anti-retroviral treatment coverage and prevention services to HIV infected pregnant women in order to more effectively decrease the rates of mother to child transmission. We commit that by 2010 all women living with HIV who are pregnant have access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services, and to HIV prevention and treatment services including information, voluntary and confidential testing and counseling and antiretroviral therapy to prevent Parent to Child transmission and ensure and guarantee sustained treatment and care for all women in PPTCT programs before and after they have given birth;

(12)Commit ourselves to intensify our efforts towards the development of new preventive 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 and AIDS programs in ways that strengthen existing national health and social systems. including by This would include integrating AIDS interventions into programs 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 on 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 effective response;

(15)Commit ourselves and call on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, the World Bank and other international donors to provide needed resources required to implement national strategies. measures in particular those in low income countries highly affected by AIDS that aims at strengthening human resources for health systems including These should strengthen health systems which include alternatives and simplified service delivery models and expansion of community level provisions of health and social services; 
     
(16) Emphasise the need to strengthen policy and program linkages and coordination between HIV 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 and AIDS plan should be fully funded and sensitive to country needs 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 which should be aligned with national HIV/AIDS plans and strategies. This must be including through the meeting by developed countries committing .0.7% of GNP as ODA to developing countries. This 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 programmers;

(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 antiretroviral 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 and AIDS associated stigma and discrimination. and to Protect and promote the HIV and AIDS related human rights of People Living with HIV and AIDS, women and children and people and vulnerable groups, and to ensure that they are centrally to the response involved in all aspects of HIV and AIDS responses.

(25)Agree to increase to enhance the capacities and skills and empower women and adolescent girls to protect themselves from the risk of HIV infection, principally through the provision of by expanding access to health care and support services, including reproductive health programmes, and through gender sensitive prevention education; that promote gender equality;

(26)Commit ourselves to the empowerment take all necessary measures to create and 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 fundamental 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;

India reviewed Brazil’s comment in this regard and supports them as it strengthens the above statement.

(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.