When Funding Retreats, Rights Recede: The Gendered Cost of Under-Investing in HIV (CSW70 Side Event) Economic and Social Council Date: 13 March 2026 Language: English Transcript: https://transcripts.un.org/ar/asset/k1z/k1z74e669a?lang=en Transcripts available through this tool are created by using automatic speech recognition and are not official records nor official documents of the United Nations. Official records and official documents are available on the Official Document System of the United Nations. --- UN Women · Senior Advisor for Gender Equality, Health and HIV · Nazneen Damji [0:04]: Excellencies, distinguished delegates, colleagues and friends, welcome and thank you for joining us for our session. My name is Nazneen Damji. I'm with UN Women. I am UN Women's Senior Advisor for Gender Equality, Health and hiv. It's a pleasure to have you join us today. Before I begin, I would like to extend a huge thank you to our key organizer Sadak and to all of the co sponsoring organizations that have created this space for this event. Unaids, UN Women, ATHENA Network, ICW and all our other partners. It's been an excellent collaboration and we're looking forward to an important dialogue today. Our discussion today really centers on the critical reality that when funding retreats, the rights, the safety, the dignity of women and girls living with and affected by HIV also recede. Our CSW Resolution 681 remains a very key framework for us in this fight against hiv. Implementing commitments is critical for us of this resolution. I would encourage you all to read the Secretary General's report that provides progress on the implementation of the resolution so you can get an accurate reflection of the status. Colleagues, the CSW 70 priority theme sets our compass with significant commitments to uphold equitable legal systems, reform and end discriminatory laws, advance access to justice and remove structural barriers. We know that women and girls, especially adolescent girls and young women in Sub Saharan Africa, continue to carry a disproportionate share of new infections. And this is all driven by gender inequality, violence, discriminatory laws and practices and all of this constrain their autonomy and access to services. I am so pleased that our panel brings together leaders from government, UN agencies, youth networks and women led organizations to explore how we can address all of the challenges. Thank you once again for joining us and we look forward to a very rich and solution focused conversation. Today. It gives me great pleasure to have our Honorable Chikunga, Minister of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities of the Republic of South Africa and our current SADC Chair to deliver the welcome remarks. Your Excellency, you have the floor. South Africa · Minister of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities · Chikunga [3:08]: Thank you very much. A Program Director, Hon. Monica Swavanga, Minister of Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises development from Zimbabwe, Dr. Nyaranzwa Kumbasvanga, UN Women Deputy Executive Director, Ms. Annie Chituku Shongwe, UNAIDS Regional Director for Eastern South Southern Africa, distinguished representatives from UN Women, UNAIDS Global Health, ATHENA Network, ICW and the Netherlands, representatives of the SADC Secretariat, Honorable Ministers and esteemed Delegates. I'm deeply honored to welcome everyone to our SADC UN Aidside event. On the sidelines of the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women Our theme this morning is when funding Retreats rights Recede the Gendered cost of under Investing in HIV Our sub theme calls on us to reclaim CSW Resolution 681 through sustaining investment in women, girls and HIV in order to achieve the gender equality and justice agenda this morning we have intentionally brought together a wide spectrum of stakeholders including governments, UN entities, regional bodies, civil society as well as academia to identify concrete pathways to build rights based HIV responses that accelerate progress towards SW70 commitments and global HIV strategies. Dear colleagues, There is a gendered cost of under investing in HIV and the price is paid first and most heavily by women and girls. As we gather this morning, the ongoing defunding of women's organizations represent one of the greatest danger to what we have managed to achieve since 1995. Specifically, the shrinking of funding towards gender equality has extended to HIV initiatives and at a rate that should alarm all of us. Women and girls of all ages still account for 45% of global HIV infections. In Sub Saharan Africa they account for 63% of all new infections in the Sadiac region alone, a quarter of all new infections among adolescent girls and young women. This disproportionate burden is the product of entrance structural inequality and unequal power relations between men and women, the normalization of violence and coercion, restricted access to education and economic resources and justice system that too often fails the women and girls who reach out to them. From the outset we wish to reaffirm SADC's unwavering commitment to the full realization of The CSW Resolution 68 Stroke 1 on Women, the Girl Child and HIV as a critical framework for action, one that acknowledges the link between structural gender disparities, unequal, power relations, violence, discrimination and the spread of HIV among women and girls. The resolution also calls on all of us to confront harmful social norms, including those reinforced within family, community, religion and institutional settings that normalize abuse, silence survivors and limit girls autonomy and life choices. And it requires us to be honest about where implementation has fallen short. Laws exist across the SADC region, but enforcement remains inconsistent. Implementation has been uneven. Despite the challenges highlighted, our region has also experienced significant gain in gender equality and HIV prevention. I now wish to turn our attention to some of these positive results in SADC as a way of reminding us of what is possible when we invest in pillars of CSW Resolution 681 several SADC countries have achieved the 959595 HIV treatment targets. Prevention of mother to child transmission coverage now exceeds 95% in eight SADC countries. In Malawi, funding for HIV prevention among adolescent girls and young women has increased from 11% to 43%, a fourfold shift in prioritization. South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia have approved long acting pre exposure prophylaxis. South Africa has since expanded the prep to adolescent girls and young women and has strengthened its prevention toolkit with the vaginal ring and Lena Capivari targeting young women specifically. These achievements did not emerge from goodwill alone. They emerged from investment. Deliberate, sustained and grounded in the productive capacity of communities, civil society, governments as well as as well as academia working in genuine partnership. They are a direct consequence of the rights based commitment embedded in resolution 68 1. And they are precisely what we stand to lose if that investment is withdrawn. Dear colleagues, the evidence is clear. We need all hands on deck. We are called above all to resist the logic of defunding, to make the case that investing in women and girls is not a charitable impulse. It is the most effective public health intervention available to us. Every rand, every dollar, every pound withdrawn from gender equality programming is a cost that will be paid elsewhere. In HIV infections, in broken families, in lost productivity and in lives cut short. We have achieved a lot, but a lot still needs to be done. We have come a long way, but remain far from where we should be. I thank you very much. UN Women · Senior Advisor for Gender Equality, Health and HIV · Nazneen Damji [9:37]: Thank you very much, Honorable Minister. Those are very powerful reflections that will carry us through this conversation. It is now my privilege to introduce my sister Anne Shongwe from unaids, the Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa. Over to you, Anne. UNAIDS · Regional Director, Eastern and Southern Africa · Anne Shongwe [9:53]: Thank you so much, Nazneen. Thank you, Minister Chikunga, Minister Monica, my sister, ministers, big sister Nyaradzai, Deputy Executive Director of UN Women and my young sisters who are with us today from Eswatini, from Athena and Sadak, as well as our partners from Latin America. It's very wonderful to have our sisters. Thank you, Minister Plenipotent from Netherlands, who has walked in solidarity with us for many, many years. So thank you for this opportunity. Let me begin with a story. Five months ago in Luanda I. I met a young woman named Porto Pesqueira. She was 16 years old and already a mother of two children. A 2 year old and a 1 year old. When I met her. She had a baby in her arms while her toddler played at her feet. The fathers of her children were much older men. She did not know where they were or who they were. She had exchanged sex for food. She couldn't go to school. She didn't have the proper paperwork. She was lost to the system. No one had told her there was a system to protect her. No one had told her or even made the services accessible to her. Porto's story is not unusual. And that is precisely the problem we're addressing today. It reminds us that HIV epidemic is not only about a virus. It is about poverty. It is about gender inequality. It is about power. It is about justice, actually injustice. So the intersections that we're discussing today, gender justice, access to justice and hiv, but also the under investment in these is what is most important today at this intersection. When girls cannot report violence safely, when laws limit their access to services, when institutions fail to protect them, the conditions that drive HIV vulnerability are allowed to persist. Vulnerability is not inherent. It is the systems that perpetuate it. Access to justice is not a peripheral issue in the HIV response. It is central to HIV prevention. We have made progress, but not enough over the past decade in our region in eastern southern Africa. Sadak, you are represented here. Has made important progress across Africa. Investments in HIV prevention programs for adolescent girls and young women have contributed to a decline in HIV infections amongst young people. Efforts to keep girls in school and address gender inequality have made a huge difference. But we are still far from where we need to be. Across the region, adolescent girls and young women account for one third of all new HIV infections. More than three quarters of new infections among young people between the ages of 15 to 24. Every week, 3,000 young women and girls in our region acquire HIV. Every single week during the CSW, it will be 6,000. These are not simply biomedical outcomes. They reflect lived realities shaped by poverty, by violence, by economic dependence and equal power relations and limited access to justice. Discriminatory laws and weak enforcement is another major issue. Where legal and policy barriers continue to compound these risks in many contexts, age of consent laws still restrict adolescents autonomy to access to HIV testing and sexual and reproductive health services. Even where protective laws exist, and in many southern African countries, they do, enforcement gaps persist. Survivors face fragmented systems, discrimination that makes it difficult to seek redress and support. Gender based violence remains a driver for hiv. It is the most urgent issue for all of us. A significant proportion of girls experience intimate partner violence. In the case of Porto Pescuera violence undermines teenage girls ability to remain in school, to negotiate safer relationships and to access health and justice services safely. I hope you will hear from Athena Network from the incredible report that they prepared on the impact of funding constraints on the ability to respond to adolescent girls and young women. So I won't focus on it. But where global Commitments on women, Girls and HIV matter Is this resolution, the resolution that's before us on women, the girl child and HIV since CSW 60. We've been discussing this resolution, we've been reviewing it, and yet we need to protect the gains because these are threatened right now. The global commitments on women, Girls and HIV recognized gender inequality, violence, discriminatory laws, barriers central. These are all central to the epidemic. What Implementation looks Like in Practice we are starting to see encouraging examples of what implementation looks like. Integrated approaches that link education, that link health, social protection and economic empowerment are helping to create enabling environments for adolescent girls. Efforts to expand access to secondary education, strengthen policies addressing gender based violence and provide comprehensive sexuality education are strengthening pathways to HIV prevention. Young women and girls themselves in communities are most important and can shape the response. Last week I have a podcast as part of my work at unaids, Crossing the Last Mile I had a conversation with a young woman of 23 in South Africa. Her name is Nomonde Ngema. Normande uses TikTok. She has 24 240,000 followers. Normande uses TikTok as her platform to not only talk truth to power, but to give space for other young women and girls to own their story. Normande was born with HIV and she has used that platform to help other girls understand where to get services, how to prevent. She says most of them have no clue how this Elena Capave you mentioned Minister, where we have new innovations in drugs that can prevent hiv. Many of them have never heard of any of these prep tools. Many of them don't even know that condoms remain an important tool. And so she uses this platform to help young girls to organize themselves, to advocate, to engage governments to be able to ensure their own access to autonomy and economic justice. So what happens next? We must translate the commitments that are in this resolution into concrete costed national action plans with clear accountability mechanisms. We must ensure predictable and equitable financing that prioritizes prevention and community led responses. We've done amazing on treatment, we've done very poorly on prevention. We must accelerate legal and policy reforms that remove barriers and discrimination and and services to protect the rights of women and girls. We must invest in young women's leadership and agency. We have to strengthen data systems that allow us to track progress and hold ourselves accountable. Let's support this resolution on hiv, women and the girl child. It remains an urgent matter for us. Ending AIDS as a public health threat is possible, but will not be achieved through biomedical tools alone. It will require that we confront these matters that we're discussing Today, girls like Porto cannot wait for incremental change. Their futures depend on the choices we make. Now let us build on what we already know works. Let's act on courage. Let us ensure that adolescent girls and young women themselves are at the center of every decision that we make. I thank you. UN Women · Senior Advisor for Gender Equality, Health and HIV · Nazneen Damji [18:17]: Thank you so much. Ann. You put some really clear clear asks in front of this audience and the rest of us who are also hopefully watching online colleagues. It gives me great pleasure now to turn to my co moderator Kate Nyambura, Director of Programs with the Athena Network. She will now moderate the panel discussion. Over to you Kate ATHENA Network · Director of Programs · Kate Nyambura [18:39]: Nazneen. And thank you so much everybody for such a powerful opening for the session. And now we get to the meat of the matter and the serious conversations that we've already started to get insights into. I'll welcome Madam Nomzamud Lamini, Director of Gender and Family Issues, Deputy Prime Minister's Office of Eswatini, one of the countries that has made important strides in implementing the resolution, the CSW Resolution on Women, the Girl, Child and hiv. Please share lessons from your country experiences that can help illustrate practical and effective implementation of the resolution. Thank you. Eswatini · Director of Gender and Family Issues, Deputy PM’s Office · Ms. Dlamini [19:24]: Good morning everyone. All protocol observed. Thank you very much Kate for this opportunity. As for Eswatini, of course Eswatini has made progress in HIV response through adopting various national strategies, but also to mention that Eswatini is one of the countries that has already attained the 9595 UNAIDS targets. However, we do acknowledge that there is still a concerning increase of new infections among the young adolescent girls aged between 15 to 24. And of course this is as a result of numerous social, structural and behavioral risk factors that make adolescent girls and young vulnerable women to hiv. So Eswatini has adopted several strategies. It's quite a number of them, but maybe for today I can just stick to a few that I have prepared. Eswatini has implemented the TRIMS on Wheels initiative. This is just a mobile clinic that circulates or visit communities targeting adolescent girls and young women with an effort of reducing HIV infections. So this initiative provides comprehensive health care services and it is implemented in schools through school clubs facilitated by youth volunteers. It is also integrated in local clinics where young people can access information and services at any convenient time to them. This also includes clinics at community level. This initiative also includes referral for testing and treatment for positive girls as well as tracking positive girls to ensure adherence to art. And lastly, the same initiative also provides school fees for girls from poor households and child headed households as a strategy to curb new infections. And secondly, Kate for the HIV treatment, Care and support for people living with HIV remains a priority component of the national HIV response. So currently 80% of local public facilities are already credited to providing ART services. And as we speak, about 60% of nurses who provide ART initiation have been trained on ART initiation. And thirdly, government has also upscaled public advocacy on pmtct. The highlight of it is the male involvement. Male engagement in PMTCT initiatives that have been rolled in clinics and Tuesdays have been reserved to say it's a Men's Health Day. All spouses who come with their male partners are able to access or are being prioritized to access services as well as receive sessions if they require counseling or certain services either for the partner or for the couple or including their own child. So those services are readily available on those Tuesdays. It's called Men's Health Day on Tuesdays. So, and then again, Eswatini has prioritised a national response to include targeted interventions for young girls and women. This is basically more like linking the services instead of maybe dealing with issues of HIV separately. But we've promoted integration. You speak, for example. It includes providing comprehensive sexual education, access to ART issues of GPV as well as increasing knowledge on life skills. And then finally, in line with the CSW theme, of course, government has introduced mandatory uptake for PEP for all survivors of rape within a period of 72 hours to prevent HIV infection. Thank you very much. ATHENA Network · Director of Programs · Kate Nyambura [23:35]: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for outlining the comprehensive approach to programming and investments in Esotini. Moving to a different government administer plenipotentiary. It really took me a long time to learn how to pronounce that. Katia Lassore the Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the UN in the current context, how do we ensure commitments to gender equality are upheld, especially in the HIV response, including to the CSW 70 priority theme of access to justice? How on ending discrimination and reducing structural barriers. What role can your government and like minded governments play in this effort? Over to you, Minister. Netherlands (Kingdom of the) · Minister Plenipotentiary · Katia Lassore [24:22]: Thank you so much for that question and thank you for including the Kingdom of the Netherlands in in this esteemed panel. Ladies and gentlemen, every day adolescent girls and young women are still still infected by HIV. Even before disruptions in international funding, over 9 million people living with HIV lacked treatment. So disruptions in international HIV assistance have made a strong impact on the prevention of HIV infections and the continuation of community health services. And as we have heard from previous speakers, this has a gendered cost as well. The Kingdom of the Netherlands has a very long standing track record on supporting the fight against HIV AIDS in our development programming. We have been supporting the global response for 30 years and remain a steadfast ally in the global HIV response. In the midst of all the disruption and transformation, the Netherlands also continues to collaborate with civil society partners to increase HIV prevention and services for women, girls and key populations. Sexual and reproductive health and rights, in our opinion, are key in the prevention of hiv. We focus on the integration of HIV AIDS financing within global health, on srhr, women's rights, gender equality and on engaging civil society, society and marginalized groups in programming. When we look at the broader picture, even though very significant gains have been made, we're not on track to reach the 2030 targets. And as UNAIDS is transitioning prompted by, among other things, budget cuts, it is key that the joint program and partners in the global HIV response are able to continue their most important work and bring us closer to the shared goal. For that we would need three things. We need strategic guidance as provided by UNAIDS in the formal global AIDS strategy and broad political support in the form of a strong political declaration on HIV aids. Secondly, we need effective and efficient UN cooperation in a form that maintains its key to impact its multisectoral, community led and rights based approach. We have to make sure that the community involvement and human rights are not streamed away in our attempts to mainstream. This is absolutely vital. Also beyond 2030 and finally, country ownership Integrating the HIV response into primary health care covered by domestic finance. Team, I'm going to stop here and let the other panel members have their say. Thank you. ATHENA Network · Director of Programs · Kate Nyambura [27:21]: Dankeville, Madam Minister, and I'm very excited to hear you talk about human rights and investments in community leadership, especially which we are transitioning to. Next is Juliana Cesar as global funding for HIV and gender diminishes, what are some of the financing models that low and middle income countries can adopt to advance justice and protect services for women and girls in the HIV response? Juliana Cesar [27:50]: Thank you Kate for a question and thank you all for the invitation to this distinguished panel. Justus has been working on these issues for a long time, at least specifically about this since 2014. And in every space we occupy we send out the same messages. Unfortunately, because we'd like to have new messages because the ones we wanted were implemented. The first thing would be to stop financing HIV as a standalone issue. The most efficient model for integration, as Ms. Dlamini has said, is the integration of HIV, SRHR and gender based violence services. When a girl goes to a clinic for contraception for example, she should receive HIV testing, be offered psychological support as well in the same visit. And this one stop shop model, it reduces overhead costs, so it's cost efficient and also increases the impact for each dollar spent. But beyond efficiency, it reflects reality because women's lives are not fragmented and their services should not be fragmented as well. The second point would be to ensure that financing reaches the last mile. So if there is one thing that the AIDS pandemic has taught us is that community led services, they work. So they work because they carry the trust that no vertical program can manufacture. Governments and donors must provide flexible corporations funding directly to local organizations and not through layers and layers of subcontracting that consumes the resources before they reach the ground. So also I would like to highlight that women led organizations are not implementing partners in someone else's program. So they are the actual response and they should be funded accordingly. And the third point would be that we must move beyond donor dependency. I know that it sounds dire in a situation like this, but it's something that we have been a civil society for many, many, many years because this donor finance operates on a voluntary basis. It's not for granted, although the needs must be high, but they are not for granted. And just as we've been saying this, it's not a safe foundation for the response to HIV and AIDS in Latin America. We have many countries that they fund their own responses. They have the dependency for other parts of the components of the response. But the core thing is there. So we believe that countries must implement gender responsive budgeting, like fiscal policies that will earmark domestic resources for gender transformative HIV responses. And globally, because we need the money, not all countries have them. So we need to look for where the money is. And we have solutions that have not been implemented out of political will. We could resort to financial transaction taxes, progressive taxation, especially in concentrated wealth, which is so dire in this current situation. And also better regulation of the financial sector. We have options we are not exercising on them. And lastly, I would like to say that it's time to evolve also towards an economic model that will fund rights and to stop feeding the one that we have. Because it is designed to maintain asymmetries among and within countries and it has led the world to an accepted level of inequality. So I think that would be the main point saying thank you, ATHENA Network · Director of Programs · Kate Nyambura [31:40]: Funding and funding. Right and funding. At the Last Mile. Only 1% of current gender equality funding reaches grassroots organizations. And I'm very happy to transition now to the communities and the leadership we've been calling for throughout the entire panel. And Sarah Hernandez Sapeda, who's in representing the international community of women living with hiv, will be speaking to us about your experience in this current shrinking space, shrinking funding space. What is your what where. What happens when financing does not reach young women directly for them to access either HIV services or access justice? ICW · Sarah Hernandez Sapeda [32:19]: Okay, thank you very much for the question. I will read so slow because it's my first intervention in English. I'm very nervous. Okay. I would like to begin by saying that we are already saying what happens when funding for the HIV response behind two weekends. It's important to say that we are not yet facing a complete loss of funding. However, when resources for the institutions that sustain the global HIV response start to decrease, the first thing that is affected is servicing a large part of the HIV response for young women and other vulnerable population in many countries has historically being supported by international cooperation and global mechanisms such as the Global Fund to Fight ADHD and Malaria. Bilateral donors, foundations, UN agencies and others. With this resource decrease, especially without clear transition processes, many countries still do not have the economic, institutional or logistical capacity to cover that demand. And other important issue issues is that funding often does not reach young women or you lead organization directly. When resources are only managed by sorry by large institutions, the voice and leadership of young women are often excluded from decision making. This means programs are designed without fully understanding the realities we face. As a result, what we are already seeing is a direct impact on HIV services. What is even more concerning is that the fall effect of these cuts will not be seen in mediality, but in the coming years through increases in death and new infections. At the global level, we are still not reducing new HIV infections as we have also not fully activated the 959595 targets. On the contrary, in several regions we are seeing an increase in new infections. Now imagine what could happen if in this context, funding for HIV continues to declaim. We also note that a significant proportion of HIV diagnoses occur at late stage. When people arrive late to health service, they often arrive with a weakened immune system, opportunity infections and a very serious health condition. And the most worrying part is that of all of this is preventable. And when we talk about access to justice, the problem is also very serious. Many times we think about access to justice only as access to court or lawyers. But access to justice also means preventing human rights violations before they happen. This is what lawyers call the principle of due diligence. For example, what do we prevent a woman living with HIV from being criminalized? How do we prevent a woman living with HIV from being forcibly sterilized? How do we prevent a woman from being stigmatized in a health center for wanting to exercise her right to sexual and reproductive health? In this sense, for many young women living with hiv, community organizations are the place where they first learn about their rights. They help document case case, provide legal reference and company women through complaint mechanisms. Without funding for these services, many violations simply remain invisible. Also, we need stronger legal frameworks and effective strategies to ensure that these norms are not and applied within health systems and here. Sorry. The role of community vassal organization and women living with HIV is essential. Without this work is simply not possible. Let me give a concrete example. In Chile, there is an emblematic case before the Inter American Commission on Human Rights. A woman living with HIV was sterilized without her consent during C section in a public hospital because medical staff believed that since she was living with HIV she should not become pregnant again. After more than a decade of litigation, the Chilean estate recognized its international responsibility and signed a free settlement agreement in 2021. The agreement included several measures of repatriation and guarantees of non reputations, including training for health personnel, awareness measures and actions to protect the sexual and reproductive rights of of women living with HIV and those at risk acquiring hiv. However, in practice, we still receive reports for young women with HIV who face coercion, stigma and discrimination in health service. At the same time, HIV cases among women in Chile have continued to increase in recent years by around 6. This shows that having legal frameworks is essential. But without funding to implement the measures and strength the community respond, violations can continue to occur. Community organizations support people, generate information, try and help personnel, advocate for the public policy policies and participate in decision making decision making space. They also carry out something that has been central to the HAB response for decades. Peer support. Evidence from the HAB response has consistently shown that community lead services are essential to reach populations who are often left behind by traditional health system. When funding decreases, all this work is trended. The capacity to advocate in national decision making space weakens, community service weakens. And some that has been essential for the HAB response for decades. It also lost the leadership of communities themselves. This is why it's critical not only maintain funding for the HIV response, but to ensure that resources rich women and community lead organization directly. When young women are support to lead response achieve. Services become more accessible, rights are better protected and community become stronger. Okay. And this will inevitably have consequence in the coming years. But we are still in time to try to mitigate them. Thank you. ATHENA Network · Director of Programs · Kate Nyambura [41:33]: Gracias. Sarah, you spoke about meaningful participation, community services. So thank you so much for bringing this comprehensive outlook to your intervention. And now I will turn to my colleague Triza, who has the difficult job of giving us solutions and way forward on what to do in terms of keeping the pipelines open, in terms of funding safe spaces, running, youth friendly services. In addition to shrinking funding, we also have shrinking civic space. So we are very first of all excited that Sadak invited Sadak. UN women, UNAIDS and the government have invited us to co convene this session. But how do we keep this practice going in this time? Triza [42:15]: Thank you. Thank you, Kate. And I'm so excited to be here. One of the things when I was asked this question as I was preparing, one of the things that I thought about is how do we continue recognizing and acknowledging the role of civil society organizations in their HIV response. So we have had so many things, there are so many things that have been done. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. What can we scale up and what other new innovations can we bring on board so that we can work with the civil society organizations? I was thinking about three things, Kate. There is need to support the security and the well being of people living with hiv. Youth advocates, adolescent girls and young women, key population, first of all, to continue being in the frontline, advocating for their own existence, first of all for changes and the harsh conditions that we find ourselves in in our own countries and in our communities. About 13 years ago I sat in a similar meeting during one of the CSW sessions and I shared one of the fears that I have as a woman living with hiv. I feared that my daughter one day might turn to be HIV positive. Yet we had a lot of innovations. Ann, you talked about, we have a lot of prevention strategies that are available right now, but our young women accessing these services does. Availability means that we are utilizing that. And also we talked about other issues because being HIV positive and taking my medication, it's not the most important thing in my life. There are other competing priorities and we have to think about that and work with our members, work with our communities, work with the young women so that they can be able to understand or they can be able to know the importance of using the strategies that are available, the tools that are available. The other thing that I was thinking about that it has been said that people close to the problem are close to the solution. So what does that mean? It is time to localize radically and ensure that the limited funding resources that we have goes to the hands of grassroots organizations, feminist organization, women led organization and civil society sectors that are closest to the people that we are working with. So therefore meaningful participation, meaning putting local solutions, local voices, local approaches first. And you know, we have to make that happen. About youth friendly, there is need to invest in innovation like Athena Network. As Ann mentioned earlier, we are working with young feminist young women who are based in east, central, southern and Western Africa. These 10 focal points in this country work with a cohort of 50 young women in their own countries. They lead the work, they do the research, they do education with the other young women. They promote and are champions of change in their own countries. They inform policies, program, funding mechanism and also they also inform each other and lead the work that has to be done with very limited resources. Some sometimes they volunteer. We have said long time ago that for programs to be successful, we don't expect young women to continue volunteering and sustaining the work that they are doing in their own country. So how can we scale such programs at certain level where locally owned solutions are also championed by governments in this country. So there is need to support the HIV resolution right now. This is the time for power sharing. This is the time for governments, for multilateral agencies, also for networks and global agencies to come together and also bring us close together and work with us so that we can seed and continue growing with where we've gone, where we've come from, but also looking at where what is on the horizon because I believe that better things are coming. I was not expecting to be here 25 years ago, but here we are and we are going further. Thank you. Thank you so much. ATHENA Network · Director of Programs · Kate Nyambura [47:11]: Thank you so much. The panelists. We have one last question for closing. In terms of action from a government perspective, what can we do to accelerate action? We have spoken about funding radically localizing radically as well. So for each of my panelists, just respond on action and way forward. Just in one or two minutes. Thank you. Eswatini · Director of Gender and Family Issues, Deputy PM’s Office · Ms. Dlamini [47:32]: Thank you, Kate. I think just in one minute. Implementation of these global commitments requires funding. Mine will go directly to governments. We have seen the shrinking of foreign support, but I would maybe recommend to say maybe let's explore domestic resourcing. Looking at introduction of levies. It could be on alcohol, could be on cigarettes, I'm sorry for those, for the consumers, could be on communication, airtime, but just an introduction of that levy for those funds to be redirected to such a, a good cause. Thank you. Thank you so much. Netherlands (Kingdom of the) · Minister Plenipotentiary · Katia Lassore [48:20]: Shape my response around domestic funding and civil society. So for us, domestic funding is of course key. Because it shows country ownership. But we also realize that domestic funding often prioritizes the national health system, which is computer completely understandable. But then civil society is left behind. And it is for that reason that the Netherlands has decided to supplement this kind of funding with civil society funding. And in our new funding cycle we have developed an instrument for HIV AIDS of 100 million euros for five years. So this is supposed to supplement the domestic funding. And I just want to say one word about the UN 80 reform process because that also has a lot of implications. And as a long standing supporter of the HIV response and as the current chair of the UNAIDS Program Coordinating Board Bureau, we underline the importance of the sustainability of the results of of the joint program. And we especially would like to identify a future model that will safeguard the unique role of civil society and key populations in the governance mechanisms of the response. So it's really essential for us to include community voices in the key global policy forum for aids which has been one of the strengths of the UNAIDS community led model. Thank you. Juliana Cesar [50:06]: Well, from the point of view of civil society, I would say for donors, governments and everybody to just walk the talk. We have many wonderful commitments and we as civil society have always been worried that we are at the bare minimum of rights being stripped of language and language. But if we had this barrier, bare minimum, the situation would be much, much different. And in this context right now I would go to the political declaration, HIV and aids, which is upcoming. And we must have a declaration that will reaffirm without ambiguity every single commitment about the situation about HIV and AIDS and that states have already made and it's not implemented. We must not roll back rights. And especially since we are here talking about chibi, UNAIDS and we have unaids, this declaration must also advance on the community led response, protecting those institutional spaces where communities do not just consult, but they govern. Instead of taking out this model, we should be expanding it. So hello UN ait. Please take this into consideration. Thank you. ICW · Sarah Hernandez Sapeda [51:22]: I just want to mention four points. First, we must invest directly in network of women living with HIV and make sure we have a real seat at the decision making table. Today only about 1% of international cooperation from funding goes to women. This is very small, but we note that even the little funding that goes to communities produce very strong results. Catalytic funding for organization is key. Second, we must truth that our organization had the capacity to to do litigation, research, policy advocacy and community monitoring. When communities lead this work, the results are often stronger and more effective. 3. We need to promote an explained resolution 681 want in all countries, civil society organizations that already have dialect with governments can play an important role in making sure countries know and implement this resolution. Fourth, we must recognize the importance of the next high level meeting on HIV which will take place in June. It's important to support and fund networks so they can participate in this process. We understand the current financial situation is difficult, but making this effort is essential. Thank you. Triza [53:25]: Thank you. Before we are numbers, we are people. So for any programs that we are designing at country level, local level, let's also focus on person centered approach that really respect the dignity of people living with hiv. People who are accessing HIV treatment, care and prevention services. We have talked about movement, funding, community initiatives. Let's work walk the talk. So let's fund those and be deliberate about them. Unaids, multilateral agencies that support communities. It is non negotiable for us as community. They need to exist, they need to be funded so that they can support us to continue doing the kind of work that we know how to do in the community level. So we must work walk the talk and let's support the HIV resolution. Thank you. Thank you so much. ATHENA Network · Director of Programs · Kate Nyambura [54:27]: So we have come to the end of the panel. However, I have two important interventions and we are here convened by through the SADAK Secretariat. So I will invite Ms. Kelly Dambuza for three minutes just to intervene from the floor. And we also have Ms. Petrin Johansson if she's in the room. Just briefly as we wrap up the panel, please clap for the panelists. They've done a really good job. Thank you. So I'll hand it over to you, Kelly, to start. SADC Secretariat · Kelly Dambuza [55:01]: Okay. Good morning, or is it good afternoon? Thank you very much to you, Madam Moderator, and to three Ed and honorable ministers and other speakers. Thank you for the opportunity for me to just share a quick word from the SADC table. Southern Africa Development Community, it's a regional intergovernmental body with 16 member states. And I will not speak much because our member states are here. They have spoken. And for me what is important to highlight at this point is that HIV is still here. It is still a big challenge for most of our countries and we still need to keep the work going. So the resolution 681 on women, the girl child and HIV and AIDS, it's a very important resolution that we must keep alive in terms of also implementation, monitoring and continue to speak about it. The speakers have spoken on some of the interventions that we need to elevate. And just a quick highlight in terms of what we are Doing from our end as an intergovernmental body as SADC to really keep this resolution alive and also to ensure that, you know, we work closely with our member States for implementation. Of course, when the resolution was, was adopted way back then, SADC working with our, our member states developed what we call the Gender Responsive Oversight Model, which is a toolkit that really guides our member States to monitor implementation of this research resolution, looking at the different aspects of addressing inequalities in the response to HIV and aids. And then there is a lot of frameworks that have been developed to address issues of child marriage, issues of gender based violence, strengthening response in terms of srh, hiv. These are always, they are always there, these frameworks. But our main challenge has been also really strengthening implementation and monitoring accordingly. But we see progress as has been highlighted. We have what we call the SADC SRH scorecard, which really tracks some of these key indicators that are aligned to the resolution. And it shows that of course there are areas we are making progress has been said by different speakers, but there are areas we still need to continue to work through. We have also what we call the east and Southern Africa Ministerial Committee on Education and Health. It also specifically deliberates on this resolution on an annual basis just to see how we are doing as Member States. We see a lot of focus in our region on the issue of integration of srh, HIV and gender based violence. Or I think there is also a speaker that spoke to the main challenge on gender based violence. We still need to do a lot in that regard. So there is a lot of work in our region around integration and also integration even within the main health system systems. So this is a greater focus and it's also some of the strategies that we are using to maximize on the use of domestic resources. We are trying to avoid operating in silos. It's not a standalone HIV program, a standalone SRH program, a standalone GBV program. There is a lot of integration that is happening and at this point SADC is also developing. There's been a lot of talk around working, working with our communities, engaging non state actors, working with our civil society organizations. SADC is also currently developing a framework on engaging non state actors. It's one of the areas that we realized that our member States are struggling with, you know, the collaboration of government and civil society organizations, even at a regional level. At the SADC level, we are now facilitating ourselves through the development of this framework just to see and enhance that collaboration with our communities and to enhance the collaboration with civil society organizations, including non state Actors. I just wanted to highlight that at some of the work that we do. But we really still need to keep the work going. HIV is still here and it's still a problem in our region and globally. Thank you very much. ATHENA Network · Director of Programs · Kate Nyambura [59:14]: If Ms. Petrin is in the room. If not, I'll just thank my panel. Once again thank everybody who's shared such great insights and especially also Sadhak and UN Women, UNAIDS and the government for inviting civil society to be part of the co conveners. And my lovely Nazneen, my lovely co moderator Nazneen for welcoming us to do this together. Over to you. Great. UN Women · Senior Advisor for Gender Equality, Health and HIV · Nazneen Damji [59:37]: Thank you so much. For once more a round of applause. Thank you so much. Thank you to my co moderator. I think this was a very strategic conversation. I feel like we are now ready to hear again from our honorable ministers. I would be really happy and very, very excited actually to invite honorable Mutsvanga, Minister of Women's Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Medium Enterprises Development and our outgoing SADAC Chair to please provide her remarks on the way forward for us now. Zimbabwe · Minister of Women’s Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development · Monica Mutsvangwa [1:00:12]: Thank you. Good. Thank you very much. Madam Chair. Madam Chair, it's really a pleasure to be back and to be talking about this very important topic. Topic. First of all, let me salute my minister and sister from South Africa, Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga, Minister of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities. My dear sister sitting next to me, UN Women Deputy Executive Director, Normative Support, UN Systems Coordination and Programs Results, Dr. Nyarazai Kumbunzwanda. It's a pleasure to be sitting here with you, UNAIDS Regional Director for East and Southern Africa. Ms. Nshongwe. Once again, my sister, it's wonderful to be seeing you and to be sitting here talking about the issues which we really need to make sure we go forward and get to the last mile. Other distinguished speakers from UN Women, UNAIDS Global Health, Athena Network, icw, the Netherlands, the SADC Secretariat. We are very indebted to you for organizing this together with all the partners. So it is really a privilege and an honor for me to have been part of this event. Very important event. And it is my hope that will carry us lessons and action points so that will drive forward our work on implementing resolution 68, aidstroke 1 on women, the girl child and HIV. I am compelled to reflect on the profound insights and commitments that have been emerged from this discussion and in many other discussions which you have done. And from the opening remarks, it highlighted the sobering statistics of HIV prevalence among women and our girls to the impassioned keynote speeches urging, renewed and inspiring, but at the same time serving as an urgent call to decisive action in order to ensure the gains so far achieved which are being threatened and we all agree to that. This session has clearly underscored that while some progress has been made, much work remains to be done requiring renewed commitments to achieving the priorities of this resolution. This session has illuminated the challenges which we face and opportunities that lie ahead in this regard and to take advantage of these opportunities we all require renewed political and financing commitments to the gender equality and HIV response. We need also to ensure accountability and social accountability in delivering women and girls in HIV response and we must ensure legal and justice reforms in all our countries explicitly protecting the girls rights, safety and bodily autonomy for all our women, young women and adolescent girls. We must take concrete actions to strengthen enforcement, enforcement and enforcement. We must also make sure that we have got the legal empowerment and survivor centered women and youth responsive justice systems. Multi sectoral partnerships between governments, sadc, UN agencies, civil society and youth led and women led organizations must also be strengthened so that we can advance that coordinated implementation of CSW Resolution 68 Stroke 1. Excellencies and distinguished guests, we continue to navigate a very difficult context and season of reduced funding towards the HIV response, the gender response, the development sector as a whole and the humanitarian sector sector. Through this season we must ensure that we act in solidarity to avoid losing those gains which we have attained over the past decades. Novel solutions, including innovative and blended financing should be sought to ensure continuity and sustainability of gender equality in the HIV response. The SADC Chair who is my my sister here, South Africa and the Honorable Minister of Women we South Africa and the SADC region, we will continue to play a pivotal role in advancing gender equality in HIV response and being an example in the region and the world on ensuring women and girls are not left behind in the world's ambition of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. Allow me also to congratulate the SADC Secretariat and we want to thank you UN aides, UN women csos and other partners who have organized this side event and created this platform which we have for all of us to engage and discuss our progress. What is it that we are doing in implementing this resolution and as this resolution is stable for us for review during the csw, let it serve as an opportunity for reaffirmation of our collective commitment to justice, equality and ending AIDS for all. In closing, let me encourage all of us to carry forward the momentum which has been generated today and work tirelessly towards a future where no woman or girl is left behind in the fight against HIV and aids. As I thank you as Zimbabwe, we continue to support this resolution. I thank you sincerely. UN Women · Senior Advisor for Gender Equality, Health and HIV · Nazneen Damji [1:06:20]: Thank you so much. Honorable minister, you have given us our marching orders. If I can say that we have lots of work still to be doing, it gives me great pleasure to now invite Ms. Naradzai Gumbon Zwanda, our UN Women Deputy Executive Director and my fearless leader, to close out our session with some words of wisdom. Over to you, Naradzai. Thank you. UN Women · Deputy Executive Director (Normative) · Nyaradzai Gumbonzvanda [1:06:51]: Thank you so much. Nasneen. My honorable Minister. You are my minister. My honorable minister, my honorable ambassador, colleagues and we continue in the struggle. Our colleagues from CW Sadak member states remind us that when the United nations was formed in 1945, Sadak member states were fighting for their freedom. And yet the United Nations Charter says we the people born in dignity and with rights, including people living with hiv, women living with hiv, they are born with dignity and rights, entitled to non discrimination discrimination. Just as the Charter provides us to be. Our being here today is a charter issue. It's not a charity issue. It's upholding the ethos of the multilateral commitment that has been there when the SADC member states were fighting for freedom. SADAK is among the countries that were the last to get freedom. And it was not just about free. Freedom of political independence, not just freedom from colonialism, but also the yoke of slavery decades and centuries in which the people were seeking freedom. Freedom today, which we have heard in this session, freedom, justice, dignity and rights is what also total freedom in our nations mean. Freedom from violence, freedom from stigma, freedom from exclusion, opportunities to be part of the global citizenship opportunity, to be part of contributing to the well being of your own life, your own family, your own community. So it's not about women and girls living with HIV as a statistic which we can just continue to track as a footnote in our big reports of development, nor a poster when we do write the reports. So I really want to say thank you to Sadak for seeking total freedom. Just like you were fighting for freedom for your nations. When I looked at the topic of our work together, it says when funding retreats, it doesn't say when funding dries out and disappears. It says when it retreats. We have to say where is it retreating to? And that's the conversation we have had the conversation on the impact, the impact of the retreat. We have had all that conversation. What's happening when there is no funding? But you also need to say where is it retreating to? I think as Sadaq and also following on the discussions that we had in Seville on financing for development. South Africa. Thank you for hosting the G20 honesty conversations happened. We need to place them here in this resolution. The money is there is retreating into private pockets. And we need to say public money in private pockets belongs to the public services. We must unplug, we must take that money. Illicit financial outflows, corruption, all those leakages which are limiting the potential of our ability in public sector. It's doable, it's achievable. Money is retreating because we also continue to have the dialogue of the global south as poor. The global south is not poor, including Africa from Cape to Cairo, it's not poor. When we look at Latin America, it's not poor. We say the small island states when we refer to the Pacific or when we refer to the Caribbean. They are not small island states. They are small by gdp, small by population. But actually these are the big ocean states. They own the blue economy. We must shift the narrative of where is the money retreating to? It's retreating from the discourse of public ownership of resources. And it's also retreating. It's also retreating to military expense expenditure. We can invest our governments, my governments, us as UN women, you created us to also reflect with you on what we are seeing 2025, $2.7 trillion in military expenditure if only 1 trillion could be plowed back. Social services, health, education, supporting our institutions like unaids, supporting our ministries of gender who are struggling. It's not that the world has no money, it's just where that money is. So I want to conclude with a few recommendations that you have said and which you have emphasized in different spaces as we track the money. Yes, let's reduce military expenditure. Yes, let's scale up gender responsive budgeting and expanding the fiscal space. Yes, let's look at blended financing and sustainable financing. Let's look at these dollars which passed. Not only dollars, Euros runs, pullers. I hear in the brics, the discussions beyond the dollar. That's why I'm saying we should not mention just one currency, the Euros. And let's look at what is happening at our stock exchanges and also say, where is this money going to? How can we, as UN women, we have been working with Luxembourg and others to look at gender bonds so that bonds can also be issued on the stock exchange and what is generated, A percentage of it could be maybe to the AIDS levy or could support some of the social programs. Let's innovate with sustainable financing and blended financing, it's possible for us to also look at the money as it flows, for it to also flow to our services, private sector pharmaceuticals. You know, there's money which is so much about women's bodies. How much is that money also coming to support women's organizations? I know that now I'm a diplomat, But, you know, we water the private sector with our blood every day, every month. Sanitary towels are a commodity that is not a choice to women. And when we buy sanitary towels, can the companies also put a little bit more into women's organizations, into women's networks? Because we are actually buying. It's our money. So I was quite happy to hear in some session around zero tax on sanitary pads. But you also want private sector support to the work, because we are actually providing resources to the private sector. The same to other, to pharmaceutical companies, the same to IT companies. Let's also have private sector hold strongly. It's not about getting money. It's also getting about subsidized services. It could be subsidized services. So as we conclude, just coming in house, my mother buried three of her children. And at one moment in our house, she was cooking big pots for the orphans who were so many. When she passed on, she said the children have to go to school so that they are not made to make a choice on whether to pay for medication, for treatment, to have nutrition, look for food, or to pay school fees because they end up dropping out of school. Yes. When she passed on, we started Rosaria Memorial Trust, and our first program was on hiv. This issue for some of us in the world today, icw, thank you. For many of us, for many people, the issue of HIV and the response needed is a matter of choice. It's not that you can wake up tomorrow and say, I'm no longer living with that virus. It's not. You can wake up to more and say, my vulnerability is no longer there when actually you don't have the resources for many, for millions, for millions. It's not a choice and it's not something you can step out to. We have a global obligation, a global obligation to sustain the response on hiv. And this is my ask to my member states. When structural adjustment happened, we asked to tighten our belts, tighten and tighten and tighten. We are in the middle of a structural adjustment kind of phase in the United Nations. I look at what is UN18 and what is it telling us? It should not tell us to tighten seat belts for women. Because with structural adjustment, what happened was the ministries of gender were defunded, become less. The women in employment on the shop floor were the ones to go first. And yet they are the ones who hold the nation together. This is the time when our member states, you need to protect and uphold the institutions, the entities, the funding for gender equality because those are the first to go. We are discussing sunsetting unaids. Yes, I'm a leader in the United Nations. I'm like what does this actually mean for the millions? And also what is the options that we are provided? We are still working on that. But whatever solutions you come up with, my member states, our civil society, it should not ask us to again tighten the belt. Solutions must expand possibilities and opportunities in order to approach uphold the essence of we the people in order to uphold the critical essence of non discrimination of all of us born with inherent dignity and in rights. Therefore, next week you'd be adopting two resolutions. UN Women is the pen holder for CSW and I'm so honored to be able to lead the normative work in UN Women and to support you as our member States together with my executive Director in the rest of the United nations system. It is important as you adopt in CSW the Resolution 68.1. Let it not just be a procedural moment where the resolution is ready and it's gathered. There's an opportunity for those statements before or after the adoption. We need the strong voice of you as our member states across the world to lift the discussion to enable us to hear the echo of the issues of gender equality into the high level meeting in June. Otherwise, gender equality is becoming a procedural discussion when it is a political discussion. You will also be considering a resolution that we know you have received that relates to definitions of gender, indeed express your own selves and your own positions on those issues because these are critical, critical policy issues. And therefore, as I look into the close of CSW 70 next week, the two resolutions which are on the floor of the CSW which you would be deciding are not procedural, just procedural resolutions. They are fundamental at the core of we the people and non discrimination for women. We will continue to give our best and we'll continue to support civil society. It. It hurts when you are discriminated. It hurts when everybody can tell your story of suffering. And it hurts when you know that the world has money. And yet, and yet, and yet life for women is not prioritized. What is prioritized is actually killing women. And therefore I appeal and request edge and and encourage our member states to continue to defend uphold women's human rights and gender equality. Thank you very much. UN Women · Senior Advisor for Gender Equality, Health and HIV · Nazneen Damji [1:21:29]: Thank you very much. Narad Sai thank you very much to our panelists. One more round of applause. And to our ministers. Thank you all and all have a good rest of your csw. Thank you.