The UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS: were some lessons of the last 20 years ignored?

Abstract

The outcome document from the UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) represents political commitments and serves as a framework to guide national and international work. In this editorial the author argued that to deal effectively with HIV/AIDS there is a need to recognize the limitations of the special session. UNGASS’s over time stems from the fact that it can form the justification for resource allocation and priority setting and that it sets out specific targets for achievement on which governments are expected to report publicly. Although it recognizes the rhetorical value of human rights it makes the issue a separate component of the response rather than fully integrated within it. It is noted that the policy and strategic documents of the UN system to address HIV/AIDS that predate the UNGASS are also far more inclusive of many of the issues that the declaration does not address. However the UNGASS declaration is far reaching in its recognition that access to medications in the context of HIV/AIDS is a fundamental element of the right of all people. Thus in the context of the Declaration countries are held more accountable in their actions in preventing and providing treatment to HIV infected people.