PartnersGF - 2004-06-09
Recommendations from the Asia Pacific Alternative Community Forum
Dr. Sai Subhasree Raghavan
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Dear PartnersGF forum,
I would like to share the following summary and recommendations from various discussions we had at the alternative community forum in the Bangkok and also elsewhere in past one year.
Dr. Sai Subhasree Raghavan
Email: ssr12@columbia.edu
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Venue: Alternative Community Forum, Bangkok
Date: 11-15th of January, 2004
Summary from discussions and skills-building workshop on the Global Fund against AIDS, Tuberculosis & Malaria
89 members, from Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, India, Laos, Tajikistan, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Philippines, New Caledonia, Bangladesh, China, UK, US and Fiji participated in these discussions and skills building workshop (29 session I, 50 session II, 10 skills building session).
Disclaimer: These notes are compiled from Dr. Raghavan meetings notes, summary presentations made by the session facilitators and notes of Andy Quan of AFAO.
Consensus reached to discuss obstacles related to civil society participation/involvement in the CCM and, to identify strategies to overcome such obstacles.
OBSTACLES
1. Communication, Communication, Communication!!!!
Information about CCM process/Global fund Application Process/Global Fund Implementation Process is not disseminated to people living with HIV and civil society in the Asia-Pacific region, which is a major concern across the region.
- Government doesn't communicate adequately with the People living with HIV and the civil society.
- Civil society at large and people living with HIV are inadequately informed of the global fund process across the region.
- Country-specific, easy to do understand information is not available in local languages in any specific country in the region.
- Government officials on the CCM do not bother to communicate adequately with government officials at the state, provincial and district level, often leaving them less informed about the global fund process.
2. CCM and Application Process:
Regional CCM:
- One CCM per country may not be efficient or sufficient and regional or sub CCM should be considered for large countries in region.
Membership:
- CCM in majority of the countries in the region are led mainly by the Government officials.
- People living with HIV and the civil society members are selected as token members (without a rigorous election/nomination process) and are treated as second class citizens as governments are often considered as supreme beings. Many CCMs purposely exclude people living with HIV.
- Number of seats that are given to people living with HIV and the civil society members are inadequate and disproportionate to the constituents they are representing.
- PLWHAs representing marginalized societies including drug users, sex workers, MSM population are often not part of CCM due to politics within the CCM and within the communities.
- People living with TB and Malaria are not represented at all on the CCM.
Capacity Building of the CCM Members:
- People living with HIV and the civil society members often lack experience and guidance in serving as members on CCM.
- People living with HIV and the Civil society members on the CCM are not aware of their rights and are not fully aware of their role in CCM.
- CCM members are not provided with adequate information on rules, regulations for participation and their rights.
Transparency and Accountability of the CCM:
- Inadequate transparency by all the Governments in all aspects of CCM functioning in the region.
- Government officials in CCMs feel that Global fund has come to them and could be spent as and when they want. Government members are not concerned about targets.
- Fund flow is not transparent and accountability is a question.
- Government members set their own priorities without consulting Civil Society. Decision making too is one sided.
- Governments delay signing on the approved grants resulting in unnecessary loss of lives.
- Who is responsible in submission of proposals? NGOs find it difficult to push their proposals through Government even if they have a clear plan of ction addressing key issues of target communities.
- PWHAs should bypass CCMs by submitting proposals directly to Global Fund in special circumstances
*** The Thai Drug Users networks application is a successful example.
When government marginalized the IDU community, the Thai Drug Users Network applied directly to the Global Fund and got funded.
3. Technical Assistance Resources and Capacity
- Lack of resources for networking among civil Society members and inadequate technical assistance provided for the civil society restricts the efforts by the civil society.
- Majority of the NGOs/CBOs have limited capacity in applying for the global fund.
STRATEGIES AND RECOMMENDATIONS
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1. GUIDELINES: What is the purpose of guidelines, if there is no accountability in implementing these guidelines?
- The Global Fund needs to enforce its guidelines, rules and principles more stringently and effectively. At this time they only remain as guidelines and there is no accountability in implementing these guidelines. What good are the guidelines, if they are not implemented?
2. COMMUNICATION, COMMUNICATION, COMMUNICATION: PROBLEM ACROSS THE REGION:
What kind of communication?
- Communication within the CCM need to be improved. Do we have information on how often CCM communicate with its members and in what format?
- Communication among CCM and other government officials from various states, provinces and districts.
- Communication between CCM and the larger civil society.
Information Dissemination:
- How? Information should be disseminated using various media including websites, network meetings, seminars, round tables, regular mail, e-forums etc after conducting an assessment regarding best mode of communication within that country.
Who ? : Civil society organizations and UN agencies that have interest and capacity to reach the entire civil society on a neutral platform should be given the responsibility and resources to disseminate information on the global fund.
What types of Information?
- Information on global fund processes in local languages
- Information on CCM membership, roles, responsibilities and contacts.
- Information on national priorities and also priorities for that particular cycle of application set by the government.
- Information on deadlines and process for application submission to the CCM.
- Information on how to obtain technical assistance and how to participate in the civil society consultations.
- Information project implementation details and progress reports.
- Information on how to apply for CCM membership and timelines and processes for applying (why cant we follow the same process as global fund follows)
- Information on rights of the civil society at large in monitoring and evaluation of the progress made by the global fund recipients.
Resource Needs for Communication:
- Dedicated financial and technical resources are needed to disseminate this information in local languages.
- There is a need to develop comprehensive list of Civil Society networks/organizations in various countries in the region. E.g. National directory prepared by SAATHII which lists 1000+ civil society organizations working on HIV issues in India
CCM Responsibilities for communication:
- CCM should be mandated to conduct public meetings regarding global fund application process and implementation to the larger civil society on ongoing basis.
- CCM members representing the Civil Society should be provided with resources to hold public consultations and partner meetings on ongoing basis.
3. SELECTION OF CIVIL SOCIETY MEMBERS TO THE CCM
- Global Fund should insist on meaningful and equal involvement of PLWHAs on. Global fund should propose to include larger number of PLWHAs in proportion to the number of people they are serving.
- Extremely motivated civil society representatives that have the experience in working towards the needs of the target groups, and those who can draw the interests of the target population should be elected as CCM members.
Rigorous nomination/election process should be followed for selecting the civil society and PLWHA CCM members and these nominations/elections should be handled by a neutral civil society agency.
- PLWHA and civil society members should refuse to sign and ratify proposals if they haven't been involved or don't approve and alert technical review board of the Global Fund.
- Global fund must see that there is smooth functioning of CCMs. Already 4 years have passed and the most felt needs are not addressed by the Global fund initiatives in many countries.
- Separate technical review committees consisting of technical experts in various areas at the country level should be formed to evaluate, select and recommend the civil society applications to the CCM.
4. CAPACITY BUILDING OF THE CCM MEMBERS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR BETTER FUNCTIONING:
What?:
All CCM members should be trained on their roles, responsibilities and rights using a structured curriculum. A neutral civil society or UN organization should conduct this training and should be provided resources
How?:
- Create a network of CCM members across the region to share the experiences, best practices and failures.
- Regular meetings for CCM should be held which will lead to more interaction, information sharing and capacity building. Dont limit the meetings during the applications process.
- CCM should be encouraged to develop sub committees to work on specific issues including CCM member training, information dissemination, and networking with the larger civil society and people living with HIV, technical assistance to the civil society among other issues.
- CCM should have internal monitoring and evaluation process.
- CCM members should be coached on how to involve the civil society at all stages of global fund processes-funding application process, governance, implementation and evaluation of the grants.
- CCM members should be provided with tools for communication with people living with HIV and larger civil society.
Who?:
- Global fund secretariat should take the responsibility for identifying resources and agencies that can build the capacity of CCM members.
- Global fund should provide the bench marks for the CCMs by sharing best practices models of CCM in running meetings, distribution information (case studies are being written).
- Global fund should prepare curriculum to train CCM members.
5. CAPACITY BUILDING OF THE CIVIL SOCIETY AND PEOPLE LIVING WITH HIV AND PROCESS TO BE FOLLOWED:
Process to be followed:
- Ongoing workshop on global fund process and global fund progress should be conducted at various venues for the civil society and people living with HIV.
- Financial resources are needed for conducting these workshops on ongoing basis.
- Portfolio managers from the global fund, CCM members, and other technical experts should be to participate in these workshops.
Six months prior to the global fund application cycle:
- One or two large consultations should be held among CCM members, government agencies, civil society representatives, and people living with HIV, private sector, UN partners, bi-lateral partners, technical partners and advocacy partners to determine the priorities for application to be submitted.
i. These priorities should be widely shared with the larger civil society through various communication channels. Wider consultations should be held for the civil society and people living with HIV that are interested in applying for the global fund for disseminating information on application process , application deadlines, and priorities set by the country and CCM;
ii. To facilitate networking and collaborations among the civil society, which will facilitate preparing large applications.
iii. CCM members, portfolio managers, and technical experts that will provide assistance to the civil society and the government should be present at these meetings.
Others:
- Technical review committee consisting of the technical experts should be formed to provide ongoing assistance to the civil society, to screen and recommend civil society applications to the CCM.
- Technical assistants should be made available for the civil society to prepare global fund applications and also to negotiate with the CCM.
- After or prior to the submission of the application, CCM should share the details of the country application with the larger civil society and people living with HIV through various communication channels.
- CCM and primary [principle] recipients should also share the progress reports with the civil society and people living with HIV on ongoing basis.
Resources Needed:
- Financial and technical resources are needed to assist the civil society to network and advocate for the meaningful involvement of the civil society in the global fund process.
- Resources needed to assist the civil society in preparing the applications.
- Technical assistance partners should get more involved in country level CCMs especially in building capacity in submission of good proposals.
- Resources are indeed to inform/support/influence PLWHA and civil society CCM members.
6. AFTER FUNDING APPROVAL: ACCOUNTABILITY AND COORDINATION
- CCM cant monitor the projects and thus public monitoring systems should be developed by involving people living with HIV and the civil society.
- Civil society organizations and UN agencies that have interest and capacity to reach the entire civil society on a neutral platform should be given this responsibility and resources.
- After receiving funding, ensuring coordination with other funded initiatives is critical.