Today's Date:

High-level meeting devoted to the fight against AIDS – Speech by Xavier Darcos, Minister Delegate for Cooperation, Development and Francophony

London, March 9, 2005

(...)

I am very pleased and very honoured to be addressing you today. I would like to thank the British authorities, and particularly my colleague and friend Mr Hilary Benn, for making this meeting possible, and to salute the organizers, Ambassador Randall Tobias and Mr Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS.

Our meeting this afternoon begins a process which, throughout this “Year of Development”, is going to include a series of very important meetings designed to give a new boost to the global fight against AIDS between now and 2007.

The first will take place in Stockholm in a few days’ time, the initial step in the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) replenishment process. This will be followed in September, here in London, by a second crucial meeting, at ministerial level, at which the international community will make firm commitments on the announced contributions to the Global Fund for 2006-2007.

As you will remember, in June 2001, the United Nations General Assembly called for the creation of a Global Fund to scale up our efforts in the fight against the three most deadly diseases and in mobilizing the requisite resources. This appeal had already been launched by the African heads of State and government at the Abuja Summit, and was then taken up by the G8 heads of State and government at the Genoa Summit.

So 2005 will be decisive for ensuring the long-term continuation of the Global Fund and, going beyond that, scaling up the fight against AIDS.

How can we work better together at international level? How do we ensure that we coordinate our efforts? These are the essential questions we’re going to be tackling.

It's not just a matter of forking out money, but also of ensuring the efficient use of the funds we devote to the fight against AIDS, that we "make the money work". It's an imperative for the whole world confronted with an unprecedented pandemic, and for each and every person suffering from the disease who are all entitled to expect access to the existing life-saving treatments. The progression of the disease which kills 8,000 people every day is sad evidence of the fundamental inequality in access to care and treatment across the world.

Quite obviously, waging an effective battle against AIDS presupposes the availability of sufficient financial resources to meet the challenge. We must also be able to estimate, as accurately as possible, on the basis of real data from the affected countries, each country’s total needs, so that, whatever its development level, it can adjust its efforts accordingly. This is an essential point we shall be considering during this meeting, and I sincerely hope that we can agree on an ambitious financial framework so that we can speed up the response to the tragic spread of the epidemic.

In 2004, the fight against AIDS mobilized $6 billion – $4 billion from international aid. This is a remarkable increase since the amount has tripled in under four years, thanks to the mobilization of both the affected countries and the donor countries and institutions.

UNAIDS has completed a rigorous reassessment of short- and medium-term needs, working on the basis of each country's actual situation, and its ability to scale up access to information, prevention, screening, treatment, then acceptance of financial liability for the disease.

In the wake of this reassessment we are calling for mobilization of at least $8 billion in the next three years to make good the significant ongoing shortfall.

This means there's a need to mobilize a further $1.3 billion in 2005, $2.3 billion in 2006 and $4.6 billion in 2007.

This money must be in addition to donors' existing and announced contributions and presupposes the honouring of commitments already made. It also presupposes the success of the Fund's replenishment in 2005. This would allow the achievement of 71% of the prevention goals and the treatment of nearly 6 million people.

At the end of this conference, a working group will be convened to carry out a careful assessment of post-2007 resource needs so that all the needs can be covered.

This is a huge challenge. It means first of all the main bilateral and multilateral donors going on increasing the money they allocate to the fight against AIDS, particularly through their contributions to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Secondly, it means identifying new sources of funding in order to again scale up these resources and ensure them in the long-term. It was with this in mind and to this end that in Davos President Jacques Chirac proposed opening the debate on the possibility of allocating the proceeds of an "international solidarity levy" to the fight against AIDS.

Those are the principle points I want to draw your attention to today./.