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The UNGASS High Level Meeting 2008 was held in June 10-11, 2008 at UN Headquarters in New York City. In June 9, an interactive meeting of Civil Society organizations was held to provide a venue for CSOs to interact with other delegates. It also served as a venue for official delegates to listen to the CSO concerns and voice them during the closed-door meetings.

Dr. Jessie Fantone, OIC and M & E Officer of PNAC Secretariat and Mr. Eddy Razon of Pinoy Plus were the country delegates. Mr. Alex I. G. Mocorro of PAFPI was part of the Civil Society Task Force delegation who presented “Young People and HIV” during the Civil Society Meeting.

Dr. Jessie F. Fantone was part of the “Gender Equality and HIV/AIDS” panel and delivered a speech on the Philippines' response to gender equality in the context of the HIV epidemic. His speech may viewed at http://www.un.org/webcast/aidsmeeting2008/index.asp?go=202.

Mr. Mocorro's presentation and Dr. Fantone's speech will be posted soon.

Presented by Denny Chen
2008 High-Level Meeting on AIDS
Pre-HLM Civil Society Orientation and Regional Caucuses
9 June 2008, New York

Good morning.

This summary is based on a regional report commissioned by APCASO and supplemented by inputs from a Civil Society Meeting attended by participants from 21 countries.

There has been significant improvement on the current round of reporting, with 25 countries submitting reports. For the first time, 4 countries - Singapore, South Korea, Marshall Island and Tuvalu send their AIDS Report.

The reports show improved data collection, increased political commitment and greater willingness to acknowledge and include the views of CS partners.

Generally, the AIDS Review was initiated by Government with assistance from UNAIDS. CS in most countries were not involved with the planning of the AIDS Review eg selection of indicators to report on or setting the review time table, if there was one.

As most countries in AP are still developing their common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, governments relied more on their own data and showed reluctance to accept CS data and reports for inclusion into the Country Report. Data on indicators pertaining to most-at-risk populations are generally absent. If available, data collection did not include the population concerned.

There have been substantial improvements in the consultation process with PLHIV and other community groups. In-person consultation meetings were generally held to collect responses for NCPI Part B questionnaire and to present the draft report. In China, where I come from we used both meetings and electronic medium to collect responses to NCPI Part B and reached over 110 NGOs and CBOs.

Feedbacks provided by CS may not be included into the final report. And for PLHIV and other communities that are involved in the periodic National Progress Review, it does not necessarily reflect or equate to actual involvement in the overall HIV policy development and planning that determines future investments in HIV programmes and budgets.

The ability of CS to participate in their National Review is uneven. The reasons for this range from short notice to consultation meeting, lack of access to resources and government support, influence of dominant groups, remoteness from urban decision making centers to a perceived lack of capacity in relation to HIV policy development.

A truly inspiring story of CS engagement in the AIDS Review is Philippine. Initiating the planning process in as early as April 2007 Philippines CS then lead and supported the review process at every phase. The country report was written by civil society and submitted to their government for validation.

In conclusion, Governments need to increase their involvement with CS partners to obtain better and further information to assist in planning, developing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating HIV programmes, services and budget. Civil societies have to learn more about the review processes and make an early start themselves rather than wait for their Governments to call on them.

Thank you for your attention.

The Presenter
Denny from China is reading his master degree on constitutional and administrative law and works part-time for the Aizhixing Institute. He is a volunteer legal researcher for China’s National AIDS Joint Meeting of CBOs.
For further information please contact admin@apcaso.org