UNGASS India Report - Progress Report on the Declaration of Commitment on HIV - AIDS.
United Nations General Assembly
Special Session on HIV/AIDS.
National AIDS Control Organisation
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare
Government of India, New Delhi, 2005.
HIV/AIDS, in the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on HIV/AIDS in June 2001. The Declaration of Commitment reflects global consensus on a comprehensive framework to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of halting and beginning to reverse the HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2015.
Recognizing the need for multisectoral action on a range of fronts, the Declaration of Commitment address global, regional and country-level responses to prevent new infections, expand healthcare access and mitigate the epidemic’s impact. Under the terms of the Declaration of Commitment (DoC), success in the response to AIDS is measured by the achievement of concrete, time-bound targets. The DoC calls for careful monitoring of the progress in implementing agreed-on commitments and requires the United Nations Secretary-General to issue periodic progress reports. In 2002 UNAIDS Secretariat along with other partners developed a series of core indicators to measure progress in implementing the Declaration. In 2003, the Member States, including India, submitted national progress reports.
All Member States have to report on the achievements towards attaining the national indicators between 2003 and 2005. This Report seeks to provide the basis for the Secretary-General’s special progress report in June 2006, and both reports will be reviewed at the next General Assembly High Level Meeting on AIDS in September 2006.
In order to improve the quality of data that has to be submitted for the 2006 Global Progress Report, UNAIDS has prepared a document ‘Guidelines on Construction of Core Indicators’ in July 2005. This report is guided by this document. Although it was governments that initially endorsed the Declaration of Commitment, the guidelines and this report’s vision extends beyond the government sector to include civil society response to a great extend. The process of preparation of this document includes collection and analysis of data from National AIDS Control Organisation, bilateral and multilateral organisations and civil society. Two civil society consultations were also utilized to collect relevant data and the draft report was vetted by the representatives of the civil society.
Considering the fact that the spread of HIV is concentrated in certain areas in India, UNGASS core indicators for concentrated or low-prevalence epidemics is used to report. The set of nine priority indicators include four indicators from the national commitment and action category, four from the knowledge and behaviour category and one from the impact category.
