Eyes on the Prize Legislative & Policy Update (October 2006)
Since our last edition, members of Congress have done some bold things for the global HIV/AIDS movement. But activation of the requirements of the OVC bill and fiscal year 2007 appropriations are stalled, and our opportunity to influence Congress may be limited due to the time crunch of mid-term elections. Meanwhile, the world convened in Toronto, Canada, for the XIV International AIDS Conference, with some positive results.
Many of the successes highlighted below couldn’t have been done without you! If you have questions or comments about Eyes on the Prize, please email Lisa at lschechtman@globalaidsalliance.org.If you're not already a member of GAA's Grassroots Network, please sign up here. We'll send you monthly action alerts and bimonthly editions of Eyes on the Prize, invite you to join conference calls on a range of topics, and provide you with current information on work in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere to fight HIV/AIDS and provide education for all.
Thanks for reading. And thanks for all you do!
In this edition of Eyes on the Prize:
Toronto Re-cap
Orphans and other Vulnerable Children
Appropriations
PEPFAR Abstinence-only Earmark
Health Care Workers
International Drug Purchase Facility
Looking Ahead
Toronto Re-cap
From August 13-18, 2006, nearly 25,000 HIV/AIDS activists, service providers, donors and policy-makers converged on Toronto, Canada, for the sixteenth annual International AIDS Conference. Hundreds of plenaries, workshops, skills-building sessions, and satellite sessions combined with protests, marches, and networking to make a very successful event. For GAA there were a number of highlights.
While most of the news coverage focused on celebrity plenary addresses—like those from Bill Gates and Bill Clinton--another bold speech made the headlines. Stephen Lewis, outgoing UN Special Envoy on AIDS in Africa, used his closing keynote speech to remind the world of all the ways in which we continue to fail in the fight against HIV/AIDS. To read his powerful speech, go here, or to listen to it online you can click here.
To access transcripts and webcasts of the most important sessions from Toronto, go to the special coverage provided by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
In addition, there was fantastic public mobilization by the conference delegates around a number of issues. A successful rally and march were held to call for women’s rights in the response to HIV/AIDS; Stephen Lewis and Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, were among the rally speakers. In addition, the American Medical Students Association helped mobilize around the health workforce, forcing the issue into the spotlight and building on President Bill Clinton’s attention to the topic.
While in Toronto GAA released two new reports. Children Left Out: Global Community Failing to Scale Up the Prevention and Treatment of Pediatric HIV/AIDS (click here to download) was an update to previous reports on the subject, and highlights the ongoing failure of the global community to properly address the needs of children. The second report launched a new area of work for us. Zero Tolerance: Stop the Violence against Women and Children, Stop HIV/AIDS (click here to download) looks at the links between violence and HIV/AIDS in the context of universal access to prevention, care and treatment, and puts forth a comprehensive advocacy agenda for reform to address the issue. Zero Tolerance was released at a press conference in Toronto (click here for the transcript.) And several news sources ran stories about the global community’s failure to address violence in HIV/AIDS programming.
Orphans and other Vulnerable Children
On September 20, GAA’s partner organization Global Action for Children (GAC) received an unprecedented $1 million donation from actors Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. This money will be used to launch a new GAC campaign to help spread the word about the issues of orphans and other vulnerable children (OVC) around the world. To read the announcement of this generous gift, go here. GAA warmly congratulates GAC on its great work and on the honor it has received from Ms. Jolie and Mr. Pitt! Keep a lookout for upcoming GAC activities.
Amidst all the excitement, GAA and GAC have been hard at work to make sure that the Assistance for Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children (OVC) in Developing Countries Act of 2005 is fully and effectively implemented. Of particular importance is ensuring that the 10% of US funding for global AIDS now earmarked for OVC programs is used for comprehensive OVC work, rather than being dedicated to pediatric AIDS treatment and other programs focused exclusively on AIDS. This is important because children are made vulnerable by many factors other than HIV/AIDS. In addition, while the US has allocated 10% of global AIDS funding for OVC and the UK and Ireland have followed suit, allocating 10% and 20% respectively, funding is not always appropriated. Out of the $3.6 billion the U.S. spent on global AIDS in FY06, less than $300 million went to OVC programming—and in FY05 the US Government spent only $62 million on OVC. So GAA and children’s activists continue to hold the US government’s feet to the fire, to ensure that sufficient funds are directed to vulnerable children everywhere.
You can help by taking action today! Click here to send a letter to your members of Congress urging them to fully fund the Global Fund so it can better support orphans and other vulnerable children.
Appropriations
The global AIDS movement has had some successes in the fiscal year 2007 appropriations process—but it is not over yet! The House and the Senate have two different versions of an appropriations bill that has not yet gone to Conference to be reconciled.
In the Senate, thanks to the leadership of Senators Durbin (D-IL), Dewine (R-OH) and Santorum (R-PA), the Global Fund would receive $700 million in FY2007 if the figure approved by the Senate is maintained. This is more than the US has ever contributed. However, the House has only appropriated $445 million to the Global Fund, so Conference will make all the difference in this battle.
On the other hand, the House Foreign Operations Report contains some outstanding language that we hope to preserve in Conference. For example, the Report urges the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator to expand provision of post-exposure prophylaxis for HIV to women and girls who have survived sexual assault, so that their risk of contracting HIV can be dramatically reduced. In addition, the House requested that the Global AIDS Coordinator set a goal of having at least 15% of those receiving AIDS treatment through PEPFAR be infants and children. None of this language is reflected in the Senate report, so GAA will continue to work with our partners to make sure conferees recognize the importance of these directives.
The appropriations process has been tabled for the time being. This means that now is the perfect time to make your voices heard! Call your Representative today and ask him or her to support the Senate figure for the Global Fund—$700 million in fiscal year 2007. To reach your Representative, call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask for your Representative’s office. To find out who your Representative is, go to http://www.house.gov.
PEPFAR Abstinence-only Earmark
Although the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) won't be up for reauthorization until 2008, civil society and allied members of Congress are already beginning the battle to shift US attention to comprehensive prevention approaches and the increasing feminization of the pandemic. Two new pieces of legislation are particularly important, and GAA is working hard to give them the attention they deserve.
Thanks to your hard work (especially those of you in Maine!) Senators Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) have introduced the HIV Prevention for Youth Act of 2006. The bill does three major things. First, it states that sexually active young people, both unmarried and married, who live in a country where HIV is spreading through the general population, should be considered at high risk of HIV and provided with the knowledge and tools to protect themselves from HIV. Second, the bill's language clarifies that abstinence-until-marriage program funding may be used to support the "wide range of approaches" that lead to abstinence. This means that these funds could be used to support comprehensive (AB&C) programs that lead to delayed or reduced sexual activity before marriage, rather than being narrowly interpreted as meaning only abstinence. Finally, the legislation requires that that the one-third abstinence-only earmark be applied only to that money intended for the prevention of sexual transmission, rather than for all forms of prevention (such as mother-to-child transmission, blood safety, or injection drug use). This effectively reduces the total amount of money from which the one-third is taken, reducing the amount of money spent on abstinence-only programs. It is an interim step toward striking the earmark entirely. This bill nicely complements the Protection against Transmission of HIV for Women and Youth Act of 2006 (PATHWAY Act), introduced by Representative Barbara Lee (D-9th CA) and other bipartisan members of the House, which we highlighted in our last edition of Eyes on the Prize.
Now we all need to keep the pressure on and keep talking about how important a comprehensive response to HIV/AIDS really is. Click here to take action today.
Health Care Workers
Also in June, a fantastic piece of legislation was introduced that would direct the US government to support health care workers in sub-Saharan Africa. The African Health Capacity Investment Act of 2006, whose original co-sponsors are Senators Durbin (D-IL), Coleman (R-MN), DeWine (R-OH) and Feingold (D-WI), would make fundamental inroads into the health care worker shortage in sub-Saharan Africa, a shortage that costs lives every single day.
First and foremost, the Health Workforce Investment Act would authorize $200 million a year by 2009 for use by the US government in consulting with African governments and organizations and providing technical and financial assistance. The focus of the support would be on building and retaining a health care workforce; reducing brain drain by paying adequate salary and increasing health worker safety and health care; and expanding training and educational opportunities. In addition, the bill would require the United States to help those countries that have not already done so to establish national plans on human resources for health, with an eye toward systemic and sustainable change. These plans would emphasize the ability of paraprofessionals and community health care workers to fill in the gaps left by doctors and nurses in undertaking vital healthcare tasks. Finally, the bill holds the US government to account for supporting a sustainable health care workforce by requiring the government to monitor, evaluate, and report on its successes and best practices.
Tell your Senators how important health care workers are to you! Click here to take action today.
International Drug Purchase Facility
After a great deal of hard work by global health treatment activists around the world, an international drug purchase facility known as UNITAID was launched September 19! A partnership between WHO, UNAIDS, UNICEF, the Global Fund and the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative, UNITAID is a bulk procurement body that will allow adult, pediatric, and second-line antiretroviral drugs, along with drugs for the prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission and important diagnostics, to be purchased in large quantities and distributed in 30 countries. The IDPF will also purchase and distribute pediatric tuberculosis medicines and malaria treatment. Bulk procurement of this kind results in lower unit costs for drugs and commodities, and allows for more complete scale-up of treatment. This much-needed international facility will be supported in part by the Airline Solidarity Tax, which we told you about in our March edition.
Looking Ahead
The next couple of months provide AIDS activists with a number of opportunities to make your agenda heard loud and clear. In early October, the office of the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, will present two important studies. The Study on Violence against Women will be presented to the General Assembly on October 9, and the Study on Violence against Children will be presented on October 11. These major reports take a hard-hitting look at these epidemics, addressing socio-cultural and structural issues that perpetuate the violence, including HIV/AIDS, and calling for major national and international reforms to ensure that the violence stops. These reports provide a fantastic opportunity for letters to the editor of your local papers. For more information on ways that interpersonal violence relates to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, see GAA’s Zero Tolerance report.
Now is the ideal time to educate your community—and your Congressional representatives—about global HIV/AIDS and about the demands you will make with your vote. To learn more about community and candidate education, go to AIDS Vote, a project of the Campaign to End AIDS.
Also coming up soon is World AIDS Day, December 1. This is a great time to make your voice heard in the media by submitting letters to the editor in response to World AIDS Day coverage (or lack thereof). Consider hosting a letter-to-the-editor party so that your local paper gets inundated with responses from your community! Plus, if you plan ahead, you can submit op/eds for publication on World AIDS Day itself. If you need help getting started, email grassroots@globalaidsalliance.org.