When Funding Retreats, Rights Recede: The Gendered Cost of Under-Investing in HIV (CSW70 Side Event)

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, SADC, 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 68/1 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 CSW70 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'm 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 SADAC chair, to deliver the welcome remarks. Your Excellency, you have the floor.

Thank you very much, Program Director. Honorable Monica Msovanga, Minister of Women Affairs, Community Small and Medium Enterprises Development from Zimbabwe, Dr. Nyaradzwa Kumbatsvanga, UN Women Deputy Executive Director, Ms. Annie Chituku Shongwe, UNAIDS Regional Director for East and 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 UNAIDS side 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 68/1 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 the SDW 17 commitments and global HIV strategies. Dear colleagues, there is a gendered cost of underinvesting 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 SADC region alone, a quarter of all new infections among adolescent girls and young women. This disproportionate burden is the product of entrenched 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 68/1 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 68/1. Several SADC countries have achieved the 95-95-95 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 four-fold 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 Lenacapavir 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.

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.

Thank you so much, Nazneen. Thank you, Minister Chikunga, Minister Monica, my sister ministers, big sister Nyaradza, 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 Plenipotentiary from Netherlands, who has worked 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 met a young woman named Porto Pesquera. She was 16 years old and already a mother of two children, a two-year-old and a one-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. Poto'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 underinvestment 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, SADC, you're 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, unequal 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-Pesquera, 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 CSW60, 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 recognize gender inequality, violence, discriminatory laws, barriers, 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. Nomonde uses TikTok. She has 240,000 followers. Normonde 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. Normonde 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 Capaveri 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 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 is 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 Poto 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.

Thank you so much, Anne. You've 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.

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 insight into. I'll welcome Madam Nomzamo Dlamini, 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 CSD 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.

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 95/95 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 dig to a few that I have prepared. Eswatini has implemented the TRIMS on Wheels initiative. This is just a mobile clinic that circulates or visits 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 a 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, Eswatini, 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 the local public facilities are already accredited 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 upskilled 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 prioritized 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 there is promoted integration. You speak, for example, it includes providing comprehensive sexual education, access to art, issues of GBV, 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.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for outlining the comprehensive approach to programming and investments in Eswatini. Moving to a different government, Minister Plenipotentiary, it really took me a long time to learn how to pronounce that, Katja Lassar, 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.

Thank you so much for that question, and thank you for including the Kingdom of the Netherlands in this esteemed panel. Ladies and gentlemen, every day, adolescent girls and young women are 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 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 multi-sectoral, 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 financing. I'm going to stop here and let the other panel members have their say. Thank you.

Thank you, 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?

Thank you, Kate, for the question, and thank you all for the invitation to this distinguished panel. GESTU 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. Delamini 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 core 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 as civil society alerting for many, many, many years. Because this donor finance, it 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. Thank you.

Funding and funding right and funding at the last mile. Only 1% of current inequality 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. I'm Sara Hernandez Zepeda, who's representing the International Community of Women Living with HIV. We'll be speaking to us about your experience in this current shrinking space, shrinking funding space. What happens when financing does not reach young women directly for them to access either HIV services or access justice?

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 seeing what happens when funding for the H EIB 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 institution that sustain the global HIV response start to decrease, the first thing that is affected is service size. A large part of the HIV response for young women and other vulnerable populations in many countries has historically been supported by international cooperation and global mechanisms such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, 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 issues is that funding often does not reach young women or youth-led organizations directly. When resources are only managed 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 full effect of these cuts will not be seen immediately, 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 expected. We have also not fully achieved the 95-95-95 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 decline. We also know that a significant proportion of HIV diagnoses occur at a late stage, when people arrive late to health service, they often arrive with a weakened immune system, opportunistic infections, and a very serious health condition. And the most worrying part is that 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 cases, provide legal reference and company woman through complaint mechanisms. Without funding for these services, many violations simply remain invisible. Also, we need a stronger legal framework and effective strategy to ensure that these norms are known and applied within health systems. And here, the role of community-based organization and woman living with HIV is essential. Without this work, it's 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 state recognized its international responsibility and signed a free settlement agreement in 2021. The agreement included several measures of reparations and guarantees of non-repetitions, including training for health personnel, awards, measures, and actions to protect the sexual and reproductive rights of women living with HIV and those at risk acquired 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 case among women in Chile have continued to increase in recent years by around 17%. This shows that having legal frameworks is essential, but without funding to implement the measures and strengthen the community response, violations can continue to occur. Community organizations support people, generate information, train health personnel, advocate for the public policies, and participate in decision-making space. They also carry out something That has been central to the HIV response for decades, peer support. Evidence from the HIV response has consistently shown that community-led services are essential to reach populations who are often left behind by traditional health systems. When funding decreases, all this work is trended. The capacity to advocate in national decision-making space weakens. Community service weakens. And some sign that has been essential for the HIV response for decades is also lost the leadership of communities themselves. This is why it's critical not only mountain funding for the HIV response, but to ensure that results reach women and community-led organizations directly. When young women are supported to lead response, archetypal services become more accessible, rights are better protected, and communities become stronger. And this will inevitably have consequences in the coming years, but we are still in time to try to meet we take it them. Thank you.

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, Tricia. Tricia, what's 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 SADC invited, SADC, 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.

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 session 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, and you talked about LAIN. We have a lot of prevention strategies that are available right now. But are our young women accessing these services? Does availability mean 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, and local approaches first. And we have to make that happen. About youth-friendly, there is need to invest in innovation. Like Athena Network, as Anne mentioned earlier, we are working with young feminists, 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. 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 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. 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.

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 the consumers. It could be on communication airtime. But just an introduction of that levy for those funds to be redirected to such a good cause. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Well, 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 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 AIDS 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 Programme Coordinating Board Bureau, we underline the importance of the sustainability of the results of the joint programme. 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.

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 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 HIV and AIDS 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, UNHCR, please take this into consideration. Thank you.

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 funding goes to women. This is very small. But we know that even the little funding that goes to communities produce very strong results. Catalytic funding for organization is key. Second, we must trust that our organization had the capacity to do litigation research, policy advocacy and community monitoring. When communities lead this work, the results are often stronger and more effective. Three, we need to promote and explain resolution 68/1 in all countries. Civil society organizations that already have dialogue 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 we 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.

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 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 walk the talk and let's support the HIV resolution. Thank you.

Thank you so much. So we have come to the end of the panel. However, I have two important interventions and we are here convened by through the SADC secretariat. So I will invite Miss Kelly Dambuzza for three minutes just to intervene from the floor. And we also have Miss Petrine Johansen 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.

Okay, good morning or is it good afternoon. Thank you very much to you, Madam Moderator, and to the DED 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 68/1 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 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 adopted way back then SADC, working with 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 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 there, 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, as been said by different speakers, but areas we still need to continue to work through. We have also what we call the Eastern 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 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 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.

If Ms. Petrini is in the room. If not, I'll just thank my panel once again, thank everybody who's shared such great insight, and especially also SADC and UNAIDS and the government for inviting Civil Society to be part of the co-conveners, and my lovely co-moderator, Nazneen, for welcoming us to do this together. Over to you.

Great. Thank you so much. 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 Enterprises Development, and our outgoing SADAC chair, to please provide her remarks on the way forward for us now. 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. 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 Programmes Results, Dr. Nyaradza Gumbozranda. It's a pleasure to be sitting here with you. UNAIDS Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, Ms. N. Shongwe. 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 Study 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 we will carry us lessons and action points so that we drive forward our work on implementing Resolution 68/1 on women, the girl child, and HIV. I am compelled to reflect on the profound insights and commitments that have emerged from this discussion and in many other discussions which we 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, edging 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 agreed to that. The 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 in 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 68/1. 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. 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 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 side executive, and we want to thank you, UNAIDS, 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 that we are doing, in implementing this resolution. And as this resolution is tabled 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.

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. Nouradze Gumbonzvanda, our UN Women Deputy Executive Director and my fearless leader, to close out our session with some words of wisdom. Over to you, Nouradze. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Nasmin. My honorable Minister, you are my Minister. My honorable Minister, my honorable ambassador, colleagues, and we continue in the struggle. Our colleagues from HESTOS and ICW, SADC, member states, remind us That when the United Nations was formed in 1945, SADC 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, 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, SADC is among the countries That were the last to get freedom. And it was not just about 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 means 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 SADC for seeking total freedom, just like you are 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 SADC, and also following on the discussions that we had in Seville on financing for development, South Africa, thank you for hosting the G20, honest 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 check 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 is 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 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 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, rands, 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 you and 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 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 it's 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'll 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 tomorrow 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. 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 UNAIDS. 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 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 working in UN Women and to support here 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 read and it's governed. 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 CSW70 next week, The two resolutions which are on the floor of the CSW, which you will 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 will continue to support civil society. 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, urge and encourage our member states to continue to defend, uphold women's human rights and gender equality. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Norazai. 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.