GLOBAL FUND OBSERVER (GFO) NEWSLETTER
A service of Aidspan.
Issue 2 - Friday 10 January 2003.
Note: This issue is web-accessible at
www.aidspan.org/gfo/archives/newsletter/issue2.htm
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CONTENTS
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1. NEWS:
The October Board Meeting -
Key Developments
Highlights of decisions at a
meeting that was productive but ran out of time in the middle of a key item.
2. NEWS: Feachem On The Record
Clear and forthright quotes on
a number of important Fund-related issues.
3. NEWS: KwaZulu Natal - the Saga Continues
KwaZulu Natal was caught in
the middle when South Africa and the Fund argued about the KZN grant.
4. NEWS: Tanzania and Uganda - Unanticipated Headaches
The Global Fund encountered
worrying challenges when the Tanzanian and Ugandan Ministries of Finance got
involved. Will such problems arise with
other countries?
5. FROM THE GFO EDITOR
The GFO Newsletter already
has over 2,000 subscribers in over 110 countries.
6.
ANALYSIS: The Global Fund's financial needs
How much money does the Fund
need? How much ought to be contributed,
and how much has been pledged thus far, by each potential donor?
7. COMMENTARY:
Resource Mobilization -
Crunch Time
The Global Fund is in a
precarious financial plight. The
Board's Resource Mobilization Committee is primarily composed of people who
would rather be somewhere else. How can
the Fund meet its mission if it pays so little attention to fundraising?
8. COMMENTARY:
What is a valid CCM?
The Fund must publish clear guidelines on minimum standards and
best practice regarding CCM composition and procedures.
9. EXCERPTS FROM THE DISCUSSION FORUM
Quotes from Forum posts: "I
have the impression that, in general, the amounts requested [from the Fund] are
exaggerated." "I believe the GFATM
should focus more on accountability and less on accounting."
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1. NEWS:
The October Board Meeting -
Key Developments
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The
Global Fund's third Board meeting, held in Geneva on 10-11October 2002, was,
according to Executive Director Richard Feachem, "a huge improvement on the
first two Board meetings," but it still left many participants frustrated when
time ran out before the agenda was completed.
The
Secretariat's 53-page report on the meeting, and the NGO-North Board member's
3-page summary report, are both available at the Aidspan web site and via
email. (For instructions, see below.)
Some
highlights of the meeting are as follows:
·
Transparency: It was resolved that "the Board will operate
under a principle of maximum transparency and openness," and that subject to
some modest restrictions, mostly related to issues where decisions have not yet
been made, "the Board will make public all documents and records." One key decision is that the Fund will
publish, at its web site, the full text of each approved proposal (or at least
that part that is available electronically).
·
NGO involvement in Country Coordination Mechanisms (CCMs):
NGO Board members expressed concerns about several matters, including late
involvement of civil society in the proposal development phase; exclusion of
NGOs from the WHO regional consultation process regarding the Fund; lack of
transparency by CCMs; uneven status among NGOs and other CCM members; lack of
guidelines or mechanisms for non-CCM proposals; lack of clear definition of
what constitutes a "well functioning" CCM; and lack of clarity on the role of
CCM members during the implementation phase.
The Board agreed that there are still "considerable difficulties for
NGOs to participate effectively in CCMs."
Accordingly, the Board asked the Secretariat to indicate more clearly
the ways in which CCMs should "foster strengthened civil society involvement," both
while proposals are being developed, and while the grants they lead to are
being implemented.
·
Drug procurement: The Board agreed on three principles that
must be followed when grants from the Global Fund are used to purchase drugs:
The procured drugs must be purchased at the lowest available cost; they must be
of assured quality; and the purchases must be in conformity with national and
international legal agreements. The
Fund will require public disclosure of prices paid for drugs, because this
"will facilitate a process leading to lower prices." (Note: These principles mean that under certain circumstances it
will certainly be possible to purchase generic drugs using Global Fund
grants. See also "On drug procurement"
in the article "Feachem On The Record," below. )
·
Proposals: The Board decided that the Technical Review Panel
(TRP) should review proposals based purely on their merits, without
consideration of whether there might or might not be adequate funds to pay for
them. It added that the TRP should
score all proposals and present them to the Board classified according to four
categories: Category 1 - Recommended for funding with no or minor
modifications; Category 2 - Recommended for funding provided clarifications are
met within a limited timeframe (e.g. 6 weeks); Category 3 - Not recommended for
funding in its present form but strongly encouraged to resubmit; and Category 4
- Not recommended for funding.
·
Local Fund Agents: There was some animated discussion
regarding the selection and role of "Local Fund Agents" (LFAs). The role of LFAs is to audit grant-related
activities within recipient countries - to be the Fund's eyes and ears on the
ground. The Fund has thus far chosen
four organizations to play this role: UNOPS (UN Office for Project Services),
Crown Agents (a company partly owned by the UK government), and
PriceWaterhouseCoopers and KPMG (two global auditing and consulting firms). The Secretariat proposed that the Fund's
administrative budget for 2003 be $40 million, with half of this assigned to
paying the LFAs. The Board did not
agree, and provisionally reduced the total budget to $30 million. The Board also questioned whether it was
always necessary to have Western-owned companies play the LFA role. The Secretariat agreed that it "would explore and evaluate
possibilities to contract with local organizations for the LFA role, while
cautioning that the cost of coordinating numerous LFAs may outweigh the
economic benefits of contracting those local LFAs."
·
Financial needs: The Secretariat calculated that, based on
its projections of how many proposals will be received in future rounds that
are worthy of approval, the Fund will need to receive $3 billion in 2003 and
$4.9 billion in 2004. (These figures
were not articulated clearly during the meeting, but have been stated
unambiguously by the Fund since the meeting.)
Of this total requirement of $7.9 billion over the next two years, only
$1 billion has been pledged thus far.
The meeting ran out of time, so further discussion of the Fund's
financial predicament was deferred to the next Board meeting, 29-31 January
2003.
Further details are provided in the
53-page "Report of the October 2002 Global Fund Board Meeting" and the 3-page
"Brief Summary of Decisions Taken at the October 2002 Meeting of the
Global Fund." (See Documents 40
and 39, respectively, at www.aidspan.org/globalfund. Or send an email to documents@aidspan.org,
with "Send gfo40.pdf and gfo39.pdf" in the Subject line.)
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2. NEWS: Feachem On The Record
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On the AIDS pandemic:
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"The global HIV/AIDS pandemic
is by far the largest catastrophe to befall human kind in recorded human
history. It's already a good deal worse than the Black Death in the middle of
the 14th century, and current projections estimate that the epidemic
isn't going to peak until about 2050, 2060."
·
"India is on an African
trajectory but just running about 15 years behind Africa. The scale of the
Indian epidemic is just going to be staggering and at the moment there is
nothing in place to attenuate or modify that Asian epidemic. HIV is surely going to kill far more Indians
that any war with Pakistan could possibly kill."
On grant decisions and grant disbursements:
·
"The Global Fund has ... to be
quick to disburse to high-quality programs where results are being delivered,
and equally quick to turn off the tap if there is misappropriation of money or
results are not being achieved."
·
"Between now and [the end of
2002], grant agreements will be signed with the great majority of the
successful Round One countries, and the disbursements will start."
·
"It's a little bit of an
irony for people to talk about the danger of the Global Fund 'cutting across
existing [bilateral and multilateral] efforts.' Existing efforts are feeble and pathetic and they're not making a
difference globally to the HIV pandemic. So I think cutting across existing
efforts is not our primary concern."
·
"[When the Round One grant
awards] were announced in April, ... the Global Fund did not have any
disbursement mechanisms in place to actually make those monies available. So
the effort over the last few months has been to design and pilot in four
countries those disbursement mechanisms; and between now and the end of [2002]
disbursements will roll out to the great majority of Round One countries. ...
When Round Two approvals are made by our Board in January, the disbursements
should take place very soon thereafter, because we've got over this period of
working out how to make this money available."
·
"We don't fund countries in
the sense of funding governments. We fund what we call the Principal Recipient,
which is the organization in the country which made the proposal and will be
conducting the work. Principal Recipients in some cases are parts of
governments. (For instance, I was just in Tanzania finalizing the arrangements
for [a] malaria control program in Tanzania, which is to be conducted through
the national malaria control program.)
In other cases, the Principal Recipients are NGOs or groups of NGOs. In
Haiti for example, where we'll be starting disbursements very soon, the
implementation is through 20 NGOs and not through government at all."
On the Fund's fundraising needs:
·
"In addition to the monies
that are already pledged, the Global Fund needs an additional $7 billion [to be
received] in our bank account by the end of 2004. We are calling loudly with
our partners and collaborators for those funds to be made available. Without
that, the third round, which will occur in the middle of [2003], [will] be put
in serious jeopardy."
·
"An appropriate share [of the
additional $7 billion needed during 2003-2004] from the United States is
somewhere in the range of $2.5 to $3 billion."
·
"The monies that we have in
hand essentially make it possible for us to complete our commitments on Round
One and our likely commitments on Round Two. But some time in the middle of
[2003], our Board is going to be making funding decisions on Round Three. If no
new money was received between now and then, there would be a real crunch when
it came to decision-making on Round Three. ...These calculations show that we
need very substantial additional funds in the first and second quarter of
[2003] for the Global Fund to fulfill the mandate that the G-8 and Kofi Annan
created it to fulfill."
·
"In [2002] alone in the
United States, health expenditures-public and private-will be $1.5 trillion.
That's what the US public will spend on their own health in a single year. The
taxpayers' contribution to that will be about $700 billion. Now, put our
request for $2.5 to $3 billion over two years from the US government in that
context and again you can see that the amounts of money that we're calling for
are not large in the face of a global disaster of the kind we've never seen
before."
·
"We face a little bit of a
"catch-22" with our major donors. The major donors have already pledged $2.2
billion, of which around $700 million is already cash in the bank. We need a
lot more. We need an additional $7 billion over the next two years. One of the
donor responses is, "demonstrate results and then we'll consider giving you
more money." Well, of course, that's the kind of chicken-and-egg, catch-22, to
which our response is, if by "demonstrating results" you mean reductions in
HIV-incidence, prevalence and mortality rates, then that'll take us a couple of
years. We can't do that quickly enough. But if by results you mean the
establishment of credible systems and innovative proposals and getting the
money to those who need it in a way that is quick but also accountable, then I
think ... we can demonstrate those kinds of results right now."
On the third Board meeting:
·
"The third Board meeting that
we've just had was a huge improvement on the first two Board meetings. I think
there's a remarkable willingness of the very different parties that sit around
the table, including a delegation representing people living with HIV, to find
common positions and to move forward in supporting the work of the Global
Fund."
On drug procurement:
·
"At its recent Board meeting,
the Global Fund agreed what I think are very pioneering and groundbreaking
policies concerning drug procurement with funds made available by the Global
Fund. Essentially, the Board agreed on three principles. One is lowest cost,
second is assured quality, and third is conformity with national and
international legal agreements. Now if you apply those three principles to
low-income countries buying antiretrovirals, it actually gives them great room
to maneuver and allows them to approach this on the international marketplace
potentially both from the IP holders and the major drug companies in the north
who are offering deeper and deeper discounts for their products, but also in
many cases those principals will be consistent with purchasing generics from
some of the major producers of generics in the middle-income countries."
"Interestingly,
some of the major pharmaceutical companies have responded to the existence of
Global Fund by offering both deeper and broader discounts. For example,
Glaxo-Smith-Kline recently announced not only deeper discounts, but the extension
of those discounts for all recipients of Global Fund finance, which is quite
remarkable because previously those discounts were available only to the
seriously poor nations or the low-income countries. But by extending to
recipients of Global Fund finance, they extend those discounts to a wide
variety of middle-income countries as well."
"The
[Fund's drug procurement] policy is that the recipients of our funds purchase
at the ... lowest price with assured quality in conformity with national law and
international treaties and obligations. In some cases, this will mean
purchasing generics. In other cases, it will mean purchasing highly discounted
products coming from the northern researched-based pharmaceutical companies. In
some cases it will mean national or local purchasing. In other cases, it will
mean purchasing through bulk-purchasing arrangements, either regional or
global."
[The full
transcript is available at www.aidspan.org/gfo/docs/gfo38.pdf.]
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3. NEWS: KwaZulu Natal - the Saga Continues
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No
resolution has yet been reached regarding the Global Fund's disputed grant to
KwaZulu Natal (KZN), one of South Africa's nine provinces. The grant, for $72 million over 5 years, was
approved in Round One, eight months ago.
The KZN
proposal emerged from a joint project by the Nelson Mandela Medical School of
the University of Natal, the KZN Department of Health, the Durban Chamber of
Commerce, the National Association of People Living with AIDS, the Harvard AIDS
Institute, and others. Dr. Richard
Marlink, head of the Harvard AIDS Institute, told GFO that he had heard that
members of the Fund's Technical Review Panel "thought the KZN submission
was among the best of the submissions they had seen" in the Round One
proposals. The proposal provides for
various forms of HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment, including the
expansion of antiretroviral therapy for health-care workers and three other
population groups. (The Harvard AIDS
Institute would be involved in the project but would not receive any of the
grant money.)
The
dispute over the grant involves three parties - two that have been disagreeing
(the Global Fund, and the South African government) and one that has been
keeping low waiting for the disagreement to be resolved (KZN).
The
Fund has a policy that in most circumstances, proposals to the Fund must be
submitted by national CCMs, or by sub-national CCMs approved by the national
CCM. When the call for proposals was
issued for Round One, South Africa's Finance Minister, Trevor Manuel, said that
South Africa did not need the Fund's money - "It will assist in some
developing countries, but it's not an issue in South Africa." Accordingly, no South African CCM was
created. KZN therefore developed its
own proposal, which it submitted direct to the Fund.
After KZN had submitted its proposal to the Fund, and just a
few days before the closing date for applications, the South African government
shifted its position, declaring that the South African National AIDS Council
(SANAC) would serve as the national CCM (though it was later pointed out that
the terms of office of the SANAC members had all expired). The national CCM then submitted a separate
$93 million proposal of its own.
The South African government then put considerable pressure
on KZN to withdraw its proposal, which it did - but too late to prevent the
Global Fund from approving both the KZN proposal and the South African
proposal. South Africa's Health
Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang,
then insisted that the KZN grant should be distributed "equitably"
among all nine provinces, but the Fund declined. (The Fund's position was that either the grant should be used for
the purposes described in the original proposal, or the grant should be
cancelled, leaving South Africa free to submit a modified proposal in a later
round.) Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang then
complained that the project would devote an inordinate percentage of its
expenditure to vehicles. (Project
representatives responded that only 0.4% of the allocation was for vehicles, to
reach patients in inaccessible rural areas.)
Four months ago, Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang met with the Fund's Richard Feachem to
discuss the impasse. In a statement
issued afterwards, both parties "agreed to keep the public and all
relevant stakeholders informed regarding progress on the issues, and to work
tirelessly to find quick and lasting solutions to these challenges, but not to
conduct these discussions via the media."
Nothing more has been heard publicly, though project representatives
remain hopeful.
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4. NEWS: Tanzania and Uganda - Unanticipated Headaches
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The
Global Fund encountered unexpected difficulties in recent dealings with
Tanzania and Uganda. These may just
involve bureaucratic teething problems, or they may provide early warnings of
problems that will also arise with other countries.
Two
days before the Fund was due to sign a grant agreement with Tanzania on 22
November for a $12 million grant for malaria prevention, the Tanzanian Finance
Ministry insisted that it, rather than the nation's malarial control program,
would handle the funds. The Fund
immediately canceled the signing, not so much because such an approach is
unacceptable, but because it is different from what the Tanzanian CCM had
proposed and agreed.
"While
the Global Fund had reached an agreement with the Principle Recipient and the
Chair of the Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM), it appears that further
discussion is required between Tanzania's CCM and the Tanzanian Ministry of
Finance on key components of the agreement," a Fund spokesman said.
The
Tanzanian Ministry of Finance responded, "We are concerned that the
mechanism of aid delivery proposed by the Global Fund Against AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria, has the potential of undermining government
accountability and [negating] all efforts made so far to improve development
partnership and aid effectiveness."
The
ministry quickly relented, however, and the agreement was signed on 30
November. "One of the things that
distinguishes the Global Fund is that it's not business as usual," Dr.
Feachem said. "We pulled back and
they sorted things out. We're delighted it's now moving ahead."
No such
resolution has yet been reported regarding the situation with Uganda. In Round One, a $52 million proposal from
the Ugandan CCM was provisionally approved by the Fund. Then in October, the Ugandan Ministry of
Finance ruled that this grant will not be allowed to lead to an increase in
Uganda's health expenditure. The
Ministry said, in effect, that if the Fund provides this money, the Ugandan
government will spend correspondingly less of its own money on health, leaving
the health budget unchanged. The Director of Budget in the
Ministry of Finance explained to The Lancet that Uganda wants to predict and
regulate the amount of money in circulation, and to avoid unsustainable financial
inflows. This didn't sit too well with
the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, who complained to The
Lancet, "We thought the Global Fund would come as additional funding to
the sector, but now the Ministry of Finance is saying 'no way'."
According
to The Lancet, Ugandan Finance Ministry officials have insisted that the best
way to increase expenditure on health and other sectors is through sustained
economic growth rather than through taking unlimited amounts of money from
donors. Finance Minister Gerald
Sendaula said, "We should not just be told 'funds are available, take it
up'. If we handle our economy that way we will have problems."
Some observers have speculated that this
approach by the Ugandan Ministry of Finance is designed to satisfy the
IMF. If this is so, and if the IMF
endorses the MoF position, it would mean that the Global Fund and the IMF are
on a collision course, because one of the most basic tenets of the Global Fund
is that its grants must lead to "additional" expenditure, and must not be used
to replace pre-existing sources of funding.
The only public comment by the Global Fund was
by Dr. Feachem to the San Francisco Chronicle.
"We have to take a principled stand on a variety of issues,"
he said. "The use of our money to save somebody else's [money] -- that's
completely not allowed," he said.
[GFO will seek comments from the Ugandan
Ministry of Finance, the IMF, and the Fund, and will report these to the GFO
Discussion Forum.]
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5. FROM THE GFO EDITOR
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·
At the time of writing, the GFO Newsletter has over
2,000 subscribers in over 110 countries, and the GFO Discussion Forum has over
600 subscribers in over 75 countries.
Requests have been received to provide the services in French and
Spanish; we hope to do so in the future, but at present this is not financially
possible.
·
Subscribers are invited to submit signed "Commentary"
articles, 300-700 words in length, for possible inclusion in the GFO
Newsletter. This will help ensure that
the Newsletter offers a wide range of viewpoints. In addition, subscribers are encouraged to respond to Newsletter
articles via the GFO Discussion Forum.
(See below for how to join the Forum.)
·
The Aidspan web site contains a definitive compilation
of nearly fifty papers and articles that have been written about the Global
Fund. See www.aidspan.org/globalfund.
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6. ANALYSIS: The Global Fund's
financial needs
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The Global Fund's Secretariat has calculated that the Fund
will need to receive $3 billion in 2003 and $4.9 billion in 2004. (It bases this on its estimates of how many
proposals worthy of approval will be received in future rounds.)
Of the
two-year $7.9 billion requirement, the total currently pledged to be given to
the Fund during those two years (plus the amount left over from 2002) comes
only to about $1 billion.
The
Global AIDS Alliance and others have proposed an "Equitable Contributions
Framework" in which 90% of the amount needed by the Global Fund should be
contributed by the 47 countries with a "high" Human Development Index (HDI),
with each country's contribution being in proportion to its GDP, and that the
remaining 10% should come from the private sector. (See "Filling the Funding Gap to Save Lives: A Proposal for
an 'Equitable Contributions Framework' for the Global Fund", Global AIDS
Alliance, 9 Oct 2002, www.aidspan.org/gfo/docs/gfo35.pdf.)
Such an
approach leads to the following:
USA:
·
"Equitable contribution" during 2003-2004 = $2,749 million
·
Total pledged for those two years as of 1 Oct 2002 = $200
million (This is 7% of the USA's equitable contribution.)
(Note: Dr. Feachem has said that an appropriate share from
the United States of the two-year $7.9 billion requirement "is somewhere in the
range of $2.5 to $3 billion.")
European
Union countries:
·
"Equitable contribution" during 2003-2004 = $2,183
million
·
Total pledged for those two years as of 1 Oct 2002 = $302
million (This is 14% of the EU's equitable contribution.)
Private
sector:
·
"Equitable contribution" during 2003-2004 = $790 million
·
Total pledged for those two years as of 1 Oct 2002 = $50
million (This is 6% of the private
sector's equitable contribution.)
The
following table shows the "Equitable Contribution" during 2003-2004, and the
total pledged for those two years as of 1 Oct 2002, for all 47 countries with a
"high" Human Development Index.
All
figures are in MILLIONS of US dollars.
Argentina
Equit. Contr.: $80
Pledged: $0
Australia
Equit. Contr.: $111
Pledged: $0
Austria
Equit. Contr.: $54 Pledged: $0
Bahamas
Equit. Contr.: $2
Pledged: $0
Bahrain
Equit. Contr.: $2
Pledged: $0
Barbados
Equit. Contr.: $1
Pledged: $0
Belgium
Equit. Contr.: $65
Pledged: $6 ( 9% of Eq. Cont.)
Brunei
Equit. Contr.: $2
Pledged: $0
Canada
Equit. Contr.: $190
Pledged: $25 (13% of Eq. Cont.)
Chile
Equit. Contr.: $20
Pledged: $0
Costa Rica
Equit. Contr.: $5
Pledged: $0
Croatia
Equit. Contr.: $6
Pledged: $0
Cyprus Equit. Contr.: $2 Pledged: $0
Czech Rep. Equit. Contr.: $14 Pledged: $0
Denmark Equit. Contr.: $45 Pledged: $0
Estonia
Equit. Contr.: $2
Pledged: $0
Finland
Equit. Contr.: $33
Pledged: $0
France
Equit. Contr.: $356
Pledged: $49 (14% of Eq. Cont.)
Germany
Equit. Contr.: $521
Pledged: $34 ( 7% of Eq. Cont.)
Greece
Equit. Contr.: $32
Pledged: $0
Hungary
Equit. Contr.: $13
Pledged: $0
Iceland
Equit. Contr.: $2 Pledged: $0
Ireland Equit. Contr.: $26 Pledged: $0
Israel
Equit. Contr.: $31
Pledged: $0
Italy
Equit. Contr.: $300
Pledged: $100
(33% of Eq. Cont.)
Japan
Equit. Contr.: $1,304 Pledged: $0
Kuwait
Equit. Contr.: $9
Pledged: $0
Lithuania
Equit. Contr.: $3
Pledged: $0
Luxembourg
Equit. Contr.: $6
Pledged: $1 (18% of Eq. Cont.)
Malta
Equit. Contr.: $1
Pledged: $0
Netherlands Equit.
Contr.: $102
Pledged: $44 (43% of Eq. Cont.)
New Zealand Equit.
Contr.: $14
Pledged: $0
Norway
Equit. Contr.: $42
Pledged: $0
Poland
Equit. Contr.: $44
Pledged: $0
Portugal
Equit. Contr.: $29
Pledged: $0
Qatar
Equit. Contr.: $3
Pledged: $0
Singapore
Equit. Contr.: $26
Pledged: $0
Slovakia
Equit. Contr.: $6
Pledged: $0
Slovenia
Equit. Contr.: $5
Pledged: $0
South Korea Equit.
Contr.: $128
Pledged: $0
Spain
Equit. Contr.: $156
Pledged: $0
Sweden
Equit. Contr.: $64
Pledged: $29 (45% of Eq. Cont.)
Switzerland Equit.
Contr.: $67
Pledged: $5 ( 7% of Eq. Cont.)
U.A.Emirates Equit. Contr.: $13 Pledged: $0
UK Equit. Contr.: $395 Pledged: $39 (10% of Eq. Cont.)
USA Equit. Contr.: $2,749
Pledged: $200
( 7% of Eq. Cont.)
Uruguay
Equit. Contr.: $6
Pledged: $0
Pvt.
Sector Equit. Contr.: $790 Pledged: $50 ( 6%
of Eq. Cont.)
(Note:
It is believed that since 1 October 2002 there have been a few new pledges, and
that a few countries that had previously made pledges for unspecified years
have become more specific. But none of
that information has been made public.)
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7. COMMENTARY:
Resource Mobilization - Crunch
Time
By Bernard Rivers
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The Global Fund is in a precarious financial
plight. Of the $7.9 billion that the
Fund needs to receive during 2003 plus 2004, only $1 billion has been
pledged.
The Fund has been in formation since mid-2001. Yet it was only after fifteen months, at its
October 2002 meeting, that the Board established a Resource Mobilization
Committee and three other Board committees.
("Resource Mobilization" is the polite term for "raising money".)
At the October meeting, each Board member was
requested to express a
preference for membership in up to three of the four Board Committees. Astonishingly, not one of the seven Board
members representing a North country, and not one of the seven Board members
representing a South country, used any of his or her three options to join the
Resource Mobilization Committee.
As a result,
most of the people who were eventually appointed to the committee are reluctant
recruits. The committee is chaired (possibly
reluctantly) by Dr. Kiyonga of Uganda.
But he has many other responsibilities, not least chairing the entire
board. And, in another indicator of the
skewed priorities of the Board, and possibly of the Secretariat, the Resource
Mobilization Committee has still not held its first meeting. (Another such indicator is that resource
mobilization was placed last on the agenda of the October meeting, and did not
start to be discussed until after the meeting was supposed to be over.)
This is
completely unacceptable. Every single
day, over 8,000 people die of the three diseases that the Fund was established
to tackle. Every single day, weekends
and holidays included, the Fund needs - by its own goals - to raise $11
million. Some of the world's most
prominent NGOs employ large teams of people to raise that daily target in an
entire year. How can we expect $11
million to be raised every day under the leadership of a committee made up
primarily of people who would rather be somewhere else? How can we expect the Fund to meet its
mission, or indeed to survive, if it pays so little attention to
fundraising? How many people would
invest in a company whose attitude to sales was equivalent to the Global Fund's
attitude to fundraising?
The Board
meeting from 29-31 January represents "crunch time". Two things must take place at the meeting. First, when the TRP designates a proposal as
being worthy of approval, and the Board agrees with that evaluation, the Board
must declare that the proposal is either "Approved, for funding as soon as a
grant agreement is signed", or "Approved, but on hold pending the availability
of adequate funding." Such a proposal
must not be rejected in a way that leaves it unclear whether it was the
proposal or the funding that was inadequate.
Second, the Board must develop, approve and commence implementation of a
viable plan to raise $7.9 billion in under two years.
Global Fund
Observer will be in Geneva to report on the Board meeting. A day or two after the meeting ends, GFO
will email to subscribers an issue of the Newsletter that describes and
evaluates whatever fundraising plan the Board approves at that meeting.
[Bernard
Rivers (rivers@aidspan.org)
is Executive Director of Aidspan and Editor of its GFO Newsletter.]
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
8. COMMENTARY:
What is a valid CCM?
By Bernard Rivers
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In July
2002, the Global Fund issued a "Call for Proposals" and "Guidelines for
Proposals" that specified:
"Country proposals will be accepted from a Country
Coordination Mechanism (CCM) that includes broad representation from government
agencies, NGOs, community-based organizations, private sector institutions
(where these exist) and bilateral and multilateral agencies... The CCM should ensure that all relevant actors are involved in the
process; and that all views are taken into account... Each CCM should document
its organizational structure to ensure transparency... All members of a CCM are
expected to be treated as full partners in the CCM."
Accounts
from several sources suggest that although some CCMs have met these
requirements, others have certainly not done so. In particular, NGOs have often been excluded from CCMs, or have
been ignored even after being made members.
What is
supposed to happen when a CCM does not meet these ground rules? In particular, what is supposed to happen if
the CCM consists almost entirely of government employees, or if the views of
non-government members are ignored? Should the proposal submitted by such a CCM
be rejected? And if so, who should do
the rejecting: The Global Fund's Secretariat?
The Technical Review Panel? The
Board?
The
Fund must publish clear guidelines on minimum standards and best practice
regarding CCM composition and procedures.
It must also release the complete composition (with names, affiliations,
roles) of every CCM. What might have
been an acceptable CCM in the middle of 2002 should not necessarily be an
acceptable CCM in the middle of 2003.
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9. EXCERPTS FROM THE DISCUSSION FORUM
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Following are brief excerpts from contributions to the
first three Postings of the GFO Discussion Forum. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of GFO or
Aidspan.
[See
below for how to subscribe to the Discussion Forum.]
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END OF NEWSLETTER
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-------------------------------------
An issue of the GLOBAL FUND OBSERVER (GFO) NEWSLETTER.
The GFO NEWSLETTER is an independent source of news,
analysis and commentary about the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (www.globalfundatm.org). The GFO Newsletter is emailed to subscribers
about twice a month. It is closely
linked to the GFO DISCUSSION FORUM (see below).
GFO has an Editorial Advisory Board initially
comprising ICASO, GNP+ and REDLA+ (the three organizations designated as
Communications Focal Points within the Global Fund's NGO board delegations);
plus Health & Development Networks (founder of the Break-The-Silence
listserv, which originally covered the Global Fund); and the International
HIV/AIDS Alliance. GFO is currently
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Global Fund. It also provides fee-based
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run AIDS-related projects in developing countries.
GFO Editor: Bernard Rivers (rivers@aidspan.org,
+1-212-662-6800)
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