Human Rights and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria: How Does a Large Funder of Basic Health Services Meet the Challenge of Rights-Based Programs?
Jürgens, R.; Csete, J.; Lim, H.; Timberlake, S.; Smith, M.
Health and Human Rights 19(2): 183-195
2017
ISSN/ISBN: 1079-0969 PMID: 29302175 Document Number: 254741
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was created to greatly expand access to basic services to address the three diseases in its name. From its beginnings, its governance embodied some human rights principles: civil society is represented on its board, and the country coordination mechanisms that oversee funding requests to the Global Fund include representatives of people affected by the diseases. The Global Fund's core strategies recognize that the health services it supports would not be effective or cost-effective without efforts to reduce human rights-related barriers to access and utilization of health services, particularly those faced by socially marginalized and criminalized persons. Basic human rights elements were written into Global Fund grant agreements, and various technical support measures encouraged the inclusion in funding requests of programs to reduce human rights-related barriers. A five-year initiative to provide intensive technical and financial support for the scaling up of programs to reduce these barriers in 20 countries is ongoing.