Abstract
This chapter focuses on the creation of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), and how this new formation set about institutionalizing a global AIDS perspective. The chapter considers the main motivations behind this creation, which included the need to create a coherent and shared understanding of HIV, together with a coordinated policy framework to bring together different technical and political capacities for coherent policy intervention in multiple country contexts. The chapter argues that this process of creating a shared understanding of expected outcomes led to a shared understanding of the disease laying the foundations for the politics of Global AIDS.
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Notes
- 1.
In a sense UNAIDS is one of the ‘globalizers’ described by Ngirae Woods (2006).
- 2.
Another way of thinking about this might be to consider UNAIDS creation as an attempt to create a formal ‘policy network that would ‘create de facto linkages between those controlling formal governance arrangements and those engaged in the sub-politics of running the normal, day to day or socio-technical practices in less formal …arrangements on the ground’ (Hoppe 2011: 121).
- 3.
Arguably, this can be also observed in the fact that the World Bank signed the Memorandum of Understanding in 1996.
- 4.
UNAIDS’ core budget for 1998–1999 period was 89.4 million USD, provided as contributions from governments, cosponsors and income enlisted as other income (UNAIDS 1999a PCB(8)). Reading earlier budget statements clearly revealed that the objectives set for the UNAIDS were more ambitious than the budget it had received.
- 5.
The content and expanding size of the annual state of the AIDS reports, which are usually released on 1st December as part of international AIDS Day activities, provide good examples in this.
- 6.
Here, Piot appears to be ‘speaking truth to power’ (Hoppe 2011: 123). In this way, he locates UNAIDS both as an organization but also as the moral champion of the international AIDS community in relation to outside publics. This position becomes an ongoing feature of the organization’s self-presentation during this early period of its work.
- 7.
This guiding towards mutual action or mutually comprehensible action is related to reframing the problem. In doing this, ‘[they] translate the new contextualised meanings into rules, norms and beliefs that infuse and unite a wider field of action’ (Hoppe 2011: 165).
- 8.
The issue is not only conceptual but also guides shared action by all of those who become part of this community (Taylor 1971: 36).
- 9.
From the position of policy studies, the AIDS community can be seen comprising of actors ‘institutionalized as oligopolistic policy subsystems’ that are ‘characterized by advocacy coalition politics, incremental analysis, problem-driven search and instrumental learning’ (Hoppe 2011: 139).
- 10.
This image still pertains at many levels of UNAIDS. Staff moving from AIDS-related NGOs to UNAIDS and vice versa help maintain this appearance.
- 11.
I qualify this statement by recognising that individuals working within the organization had their own personal links with civil society groups as well as policy advocacy networks. They were often engaged in informal discussion to generate reactions from these quarters to challenge the formal positions presented.
- 12.
This change in directorship has represented for some a change in the way the organization engaged with itself and with HIV. Robin Gorna provides and important analysis of this change by reflecting on the new UNAIDS building in Geneva. She says ‘it sent a strong message: the AIDS movement was here to stay… Strikingly at the start of 2009, a year after Michel Sidibé took over from Peter Piot as the new executive director…actual cracks started to appear in the new building. Much of the beautiful art was taken down…’ (Gorna 2014: 107–08). Another view of this is offered in a discussion with a former staff member of UNAIDS, who said that UNAIDS was a knowledge organization and strong in research, now it is public relations focused, most of its work is on advocacy and not much on research.
- 13.
Here, I am observing the close relationship between UNAIDS and the Global Fund that reinforced the diffusion of a global vision on AIDS through projects and programmes development by national policy makers and civil society groups.
- 14.
PEPFAR was initially launched by G. W. Bush at his State of the Union address in 2003.
- 15.
There were other campaigns aimed to focus attention on AIDS designed by UNAIDS and its partners. These became mechanisms through which the AIDS community was brought together and reproduced itself as a global collective.
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Seckinelgin, H. (2017). The Institutionalization of Global AIDS and the Creation of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). In: The Politics of Global AIDS. Social Aspects of HIV, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46013-0_3
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