Global Citizens Summit 2009

 A three day summit HIV and AIDS called on governments to depoliticise the fight against HIV and AIDS and take the lead in fighting the scourge rather than leave it to donors and lobbyist.

“Governments must take their stewardship role in HIV and AIDS response and aid or support from outside must only come to complement their efforts, strategy and plan and not to leave the bulk of the response dependent on donor funding.”

“At the moment the HIV and AIDS appears to have been left as a donor agenda, yet it is the citizens, taxpayers and voters who maintain these governments in power that are most affected,” said Leonard Okello, the Head of HIV and AIDS at ActionAid.

There were calls to ensure that citizens take their rightful place in the fight. “We cannot pretend that we are fighting the scourge on behalf of the citizens yet they don’t have a place on the battle field. They must be given their space and led into the battle,” said James Kamau an activist attending the conference.

“Aids is entering a phase where response must be driven by the citizens infected and affected by HIV and not according to the agenda set by donors and technocrats.”

Participants appreciated the meeting saying space for frontline citizens involved in the fight against Aids to articulate their concerns has constantly been reducing despite there being many conferences. The conferences, they said, were dominated by lobbyist without genuine concern and interest for PLWHA and NGOs that were formed to cash-in on HIV money.

The Global Citizens Summit held in Nairobi represented citizens from 32 nationals among them national aids control council representatives (commissioners) from seven countries in Africa and donors from Europe and the Americas.

Deputy Director of UNAIDS El Hadj Assy, challenged governments and donors to provide legislation and incentives for universal testing. “Will people come out to go for testing when they know after they test positive, they are discriminated against, fired from employment, do not get access to treatment?”

The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health Mr. Mark Bor said that although the government had taken great strides in the fight against HIV and AIDS more needed to be done.

“Yes we as a nation have made progress in fight but we cannot sit back yet we need to move forward as the fight has not been won yet,” he said.

Among the key recommendations that came from the meeting include:

• Expand and diversify testing options (door to door, self testing, male-targeted) Aids testing should become a universal agenda. They observed that universal testing sometimes is hampered by the contest for human rights. We need to be careful about what rights we are talking about – is it the human right to live or the human right to die? We also need to look into providing incentives to promote testing.
• National governments must provide incentives to promote care and support initiatives for citizens i.e. tax exemptions for caregivers, social protection for care givers and people living with HIV as well as micro-enterprise funds targeted at caregivers and people living with HIV
• Nutrition should be made part of treatment as there are many people who today, die not because they cannot access ARVs but because they do not have access to adequate nutrition. Both the national governments and donors should aim to promote food sovereignty at the household level