Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Closing Civil Society Caucus

General Secretary had sent a message encouraging us that though we did not have a final document, but it was a chance to increase the amount of pressure on the 150 member states attending (the highest number ever).

The treatment gap (getting the next six million on to treatment) is high on the agenda, as is pressure to t travel bans on PLWHA.

Youth statement and declaration on women will be in the report [I have hard and electronic copies - if you want them, email me].

UNGASS on drugs (due in 2009) and UNGASS on HIV need to be consistent with one another in their approaches to decriminalisation and human rights as pre-requisites to increasing access to treatment, care and prevention initiatives.

WHO coverage stating that AIDS was not a heterosexual epidemic in the press will be addressed, and a clearer message stating the need for ongoing action and pressure would be made.

Civil Society statement on UNGASS will be published on www.ungassforum.wordpress.com & www.icaso.org

Other matters
The governments seem to have sent mainly Civil Society representatives from their delegations to the Civil Society hearing and other hearings where we were presenting. So in effect we were talking to ourselves rather than directly to government delegations. President of General Assembly has recognised this as a problem and will be seeking to address this at future meetings. There seems to have been an assumption by governments that these sessions were just for Civil Society rather than seeing these as part of a dialogue between governments and Civil Society.

There was a bit of a feel of a lack of energy and engagement by Civil Society as a whole. Some seemed to be focussed just on their government delegation, and seemed less able to vocalise concerns. Involvement of Civil Society in national delegations is to be applauded and it is an improvement over 2006, but it may compromise or silence a lot of Civil Society voices.

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