TOOLS FOR GLOBAL FUND ADVOCACY
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Dec 2023 GFAN Global Fund Board Meeting 50 Report +
Our report on the 50th Global Fund Board Meeting, held from November 14th to 16th, provide and extensive summary of the discussion held at the Board. Some of our key takeaways from the discussions inside and outside of the Board Meeting room are below. To read the full report, click here.
Some thoughts about the Board Meeting
New Board Format
The Board Meeting agenda was built around a pre-day of updates on technical and governance issues, a first day dedicated to further updates from the Executive director and the Secretariat covering the three diseases and contributory objectives, with no decision points, and only then two days for the board to make decisions.
We liked this structure, which gave all in the room time to absorb context and helped clarify positions and build consensus across delegations before it came time to take decisions. It felt intentional and natural, and we hope to see it continue.
Informal mini board retreat
The Board Member and Alternates were scheduled for a day of informal board retreat immediately after the closure of the Board Meeting itself – GFAN was not invited to attend and though Board members were openly discussing their priorities for the retreat throughout the meeting, the exact agenda was not shared with us. The Members and Alternates seemed to want to focus discussions on governance (the proposal for a new voting seat on the Board for the African Union put forward by some delegations) and sustainability (see below).
Sustainability, Co-financing and Transition review
A proposal was put to the Board and the Secretariat for a review, opening the door to an eventual revision, of the Sustainability, Co-financing and Transition (STC) policy of the Global Fund. The proposal seemed motivated primarily by better tools to promote country ownership and providing donor with a clear “off-ramp” in the face of rising demand from the most vulnerable countries. The request was not only received positively, with a number of participants noting that the type of changes suggested to the STC policy could really be accommodated within its current iteration.
Trade-offs
Linked to the STC discussions, “tradeoffs” really felt like the theme of the meeting. In the face of stagnating funding for GC7, limited prospects for improvements in GC8, and increased demand (see polycrisis below), the Secretariat, TRP, technical partners, and all delegations focused a lot of their interventions around resource allocation, what to prioritize and implicitly what to roll back.
Tradeoffs were discussed in particular with regard to innovation and coverage (buying new more expensive tools or cheaper, less effective ones), in terms of types of programs (prevention vs. diagnostics vs. treatment), and in terms of mandate (should certain thematic be relinquished in favor of other partners, and how should emerging issues be integrated without spreading the partnership thin?).
From our perspective, these discussions are essential to make sure there is transparency on what is prioritized and what is not, but the other side of that equation – how to increase the size if the pie so we do not have to trade one intervention for another or chase efficiencies all the way to US$2.3 more billions – was not featured enough throughout the meeting.
FGHI
The Future of Global Health Initiative was mentioned repeatedly throughout the Board Meeting by different delegations both among donor and implementing constituencies. References to FGHI were made to support calls for greater country ownership, and for greater collaboration and coordination across GHIs; these same calls were also made under the slogan “One Plan, One Budget, One Report”.
Polycrisis
Though some indicators were thankfully promising, the underlying tone for the meeting was one of concern if not gloom, encapsulated by the word “polycrisis” which creeped its way into a number of intervention (if the topic interests you this is a good newsletter and this is a good twitter account). The facets of the crisis of everything that were most discussed were climate change and its first, second and third order effects on health (i.e. respectively hotter temperatures, spread of vectors, and malnutrition, inequalities and poverty), the worsening of international tensions and ongoing conflicts (i.e. Ukraine and, though it was not mentioned directly as often, the ongoing Hamas/Israel conflict), the rise of resistance in Malaria to both insecticide and artemisinin, and a global anti-rights movement that made itself felt most starkly and most recently in Uganda.
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Nov 2023 GFAN Guide to Global Fund Board Meetings +
Please find here our guide to the Global Fund Board Meetings – the delegations, the structures, etc.
Updated November 2023.
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Sep 2023 #2023TBHLM Affected Communities and Civil Society Coordination Hub Statement on the Political Declaration +
The leaders assembled for the United Nations High Level Meeting (TB HLM) has adopted its political declaration with no objection at the opening of the TB HLM on September 22, 2023.
The Affected Communities and Civil Society Coordination Hub has released the following statement regarding the adoption of the political declaration. Find the full statement here.
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Mar 2023 GFAN TBHLM Scorecard +
World leaders committed in 2018 in New York to a set of targets, to put us on track to end TB by 2030. They also agreed to reconvene 5 years later to assess progress on their commitments.
Our 2018 TB HLM scorecard assesses our progress against the 2018 targets; you can download it:
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Mar 2023 Catalytic Investments in GC7 +
Our brief on the Global Fund’s Catalytic Investments – what they are, and where they stand at the beginning of Grant Cycle 7.
Download our brief: Catalytic Investments 101
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Dec 2022 GFAN Pledging Conference Pre-Meeting Report +
On September 16th & 17th 2022 GFAN held a pre-meeting ahead of the Global Fund Pledging Conference held on September 21st. More 90 participants joined in person or virtually.
The meeting had two main overarching components. One focused on the short-term objective of the pledging conference scheduled to take place on 21 September, just four days after the GFAN meeting ended, also in New York City: how to support the Global Fund’s efforts to get donors to pledge a total of at least $18 billion for the 2023–2025 funding cycle. Many of these discussions centred on finding ways to successfully influence key donor decision-makers to announce contributions before or at the pledging conference that were at least 30% larger than committed for the 6th replenishment. The second component explored longer-term issues and priorities, including:
- the network’s possible future role in pandemic preparedness and response (PPR) activities and advocacy, including the newly launched Financial Intermediary Fund (FIF) for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response;
- entry points for influencing Global Fund policies and decisions over the rest of 2022 and beyond, including at committee and Board meetings where discussions will take place on implementing the new Global Fund Strategy and deciding how to spend the money raised for the next funding cycle; and
- upcoming high-level global meetings of importance to HIV, TB, and malaria responses, including on TB and universal health coverage (UHC).
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Nov 2022 GFAN Report on the 48th Global Fund Board Meeting +
The Global Fund’s 48th Board meeting took place from the 15th to the 17th of November 2022; it was the first full in-person Board Meeting to take place since 2020.
You can find some of the documents submitted to the Board by the Secretariat here (you need to click on the + sign under Board Meeting Documents to see the full list). The complete list of decision points has already been uploaded, as well as a participants’ list, but at the time of writing no other document is available on the website.
A de-brief call from the Board Meeting was held with the Communities and two NGO Delegations on November 30th and you can access the recording and materials from that call here.
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Nov 2022 Advocacy guides to 1/4/6×24 – shorter regimens for TB +
Countries will soon begin the process of developing their funding requests, and already Country Coordination Mechanisms are holding country dialogues to identify key priorities.
The funding request development, and the country dialogues that precedes it, is a crucial time to ensure that the Global Fund invests in the latest advances in diagnostic and treatment in the next funding cycle. For TB advocates representing civil society and affected communities, an essential development is the series of new shorter regimens for TB that have been shown to be faster, safer and more effective. The Treatment Action Group (TAG), Partners In Health (PIH) and a coalition of civil society organizations have launched the 1/4/6×24 campaign to raise awareness around the new regimens. The next step to ensure that all who need it get access is to put these new regimens in the funding requests.
We are releasing a series of advocacy briefing notes presenting the new regimens, and guiding you through how to advocate for their inclusion in Global Fund funding requests.
The briefs:
- Achieving 1/4/6 by 2024 in NFM4: A Guide to Advocating for new and shorter TB regimens in Global Fund Country Dialogues also in Spanish & in French
- Guide: the one month and once weekly regimens for TB prevention also in Spanish & in French
- Guide: the four month regimen for DS TB also in Spanish & in French
- Guide: the six month regimen for DR TB also in Spanish & in French
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Aug 2022 Pledging Conference Communication Pack +
Find here all the resources you need to help you in your advocacy efforts in the last stretch until replenishment! You can also check our Pledge Tracker and our Calendar of events in New York.
Social Media Visuals – 20 Millions Lives Like Mine Campaign
Talking Points
- The Global Fund has a long, documented track record of investment for impact in over a hundred countries.
- The Global Fund has saved over 50 million lives since its creation 20 years ago.
- Meeting the target of $18 billion for the 7th Replenishment will allow the Global Fund to save over 20 million lives in the upcoming 3 years.
- An ambitious investment of $18 billion is necessary because for the first time in 20 years, we lost ground in the fight against the three diseases – because of COVID-19.
- A third of all Global Fund investment contribute to health system strengthening and pandemic preparedness – ending the three epidemics is the best way to prepare for the next pandemic.
- The world committed to end the three diseases as epidemics by 2030 – this cannot be achieved without a significant surge in investment to put us back on track.
- The United States has committed to pledge $1 for every $2 dollar pledged by other donors – meaning that to meet the target, we need pledges by all other donors to add up to at least $12 billion. We are not on track to meet that goal, and risk leaving money on the table.
For more, read our Fully Fund the Global Fund report, or any of our 10 briefs on topic ranging from Gender Inequality to the role of the Private Sector and Mental Health.
Social media Visuals
For the pledging conference, we have prepared twitter- and facebook-friendly visuals.
A first batch to use alongside any messaging, centered around our speakers under the title “Save 20 million lives like mine”.
A second batch focused more narrowly on fundraising and ringing the alarm that we appear to be off track to meet the $18 billion target.
You can find here all the high-resolution files.
Speakers Video
A few months ago we produced a series of video featuring our speakers promoting the Global Fund. You can find all the video on our YouTube channel.
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Aug 2022 Still Waiting, Still Dying: The Global Fund and Key and Vulnerable Populations in the Response to HIV, TB and Malaria +
Read our updated key and vulnerable population paper, launched during AIDS22 in Montréal: Read the full paper
This year, the Global Fund launched its strategic plan for the years 2023 – 2028. The Global Fund is also currently engaged in its Seventh Replenishment, raising funds for the coming three years, and aiming for at least US$18 billion in pledges.
This paper, developed by the Global Fund Advocates Network (GFAN), discusses the Global Fund’s efforts and challenges to support key and marginalized populations in the response to HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria (HTM). The paper sounds an alarm and describes five key challenges that need to be widely acknowledged and addressed:
- Key and Vulnerable Populations: Key and vulnerable populations, while marginalized economically, socially, and legally, are not at the margins of epidemics, but instead are at the center of infection transmissions and loss of life due to the three diseases. For this reason, global epidemic control and achievement of the SDGs depends on key and vulnerable populations being at the center of programming by country governments and international funding partnerships such as the Global Fund.
- Funding Gaps: Global resource mobilization targets for the three diseases, although ambitious, fall short of the calculated total resource needs to bring the three epidemics under control. Even if resource mobilization targets are met, there will be an estimated $28.4 billion funding gap. Key and vulnerable populations bear the burden of unequal resource allocations and access to services in every country, and the gap in resource mobilization will disproportionately affect those populations.
- Reducing morbidity and mortality: Despite significant progress in most countries in reducing infections, global reports from UNAIDS and others show that we haven’t done enough in preventing new infections and that infection levels continue to soar in many communities globally.
- COVID scarring: Over the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in significant setbacks to the progress made to date. 5. No seat at the table: While KVPs are represented on the Global Fund Board and some CCMs, they are often excluded from program and policy development, implementation, and evaluation efforts. This serves to further the inequities and ineffectiveness in service delivery and health care access