Tracking the Human Rights Response to HIV
The following was written by FCAA’s Director of Operations, Sarah Hamilton, for The Foundation Center’s Philantopic Blog
“Good decisions always require good information, and when resources are limited, data matters even more….”– Greg Millett, vice president and director of public policy, amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research
In August, AVAC and amfAR issued a report, Data Watch: Closing a Persistent Gap in the AIDS Response, that calls for a new approach to tracking data on the global response to AIDS. What’s unique about Data Watch is that it places equal emphasis on filling the gaps in both epidemiological and expenditure information. Data has always reigned supreme in the public health world, but in their new report AVAC and amfAR pose a simple question: What happens to our quest to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2030 if we don’t know whether we have the funding to sustain our efforts?
Through improved data, for instance, we now know that key populations (i.e., men who have sex with men, people who use drugs, transgender people, and sex workers) represent a major share of the epidemic, largely due to such factors as stigma, discrimination, and punitive laws that continue to marginalize these populations and keep them from the care and treatment they need. With human rights abuses continuing to fuel the epidemic and impacting the health and rights of those most at-risk, targeted funding for a human rights response to HIV is critical.
But is that happening?
Sadly, no. Recent research from the Join United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) [1] found that less than one percent of the $18.9 billion spent on the overall HIV response in 2012 supported human rights programming.
Funders Concerned About AIDS (FCAA) has long heralded the unique flexibility of philanthropy to support controversial issues where donor governments may be reluctant to step in, so it wasn’t surprising that the report cited private philanthropy as the most accessible source of funds for HIV-related human rights efforts. Indeed, some 56 percent of civil society organization (CSO) survey respondents reported that they had received a foundation grant for HIV-related human rights work. While many of the surveyed organizations work at the intersection of HIV and human rights, the report also found that donors in these fields continue to work in silos.
Read the full article here.