Ajay Kumar Uprety - RFP South Asia

Young People at the UN High Level Meeting on AIDS

The recently concluded United Nations High Level Meeting on AIDS was a highly-anticipated event for activists, advocates and people living with HIV. We were hoping that world leaders would recognize not only the necessities of fulfilling the past commitment, but also that it is high time for increased commitment.

The United Nations Office of President of General Assembly convened the Civil Society Task Force (CSTF) to facilitate a dialogue between broader civil society groups and government bodies in this important global decision. The CSTF, a body comprised of 12 nominated members, represented all the civil society constituencies and was supported by UNAIDS, which provided technical support. I was granted the opportunity to serve as the representative for the Youth constituency. It was a completely a new experience for me to be able to draw such attention to global youth as a prominent stakeholder in the HIV response. The discussion within the task force was so vigorous and we all aimed for inclusiveness as supporters and advocates for all those infected and affected by HIV, not only as single constituencies.

The task of that first meeting was to discuss and plan the Civil Society Hearing (CSH). We designed sessions to be included in the official CSH programme, selected speakers (including young people as speakers in the Global Panel) and assigned persons to support speakers. The Civil Society Hearing was a successful event for young people; not only was there a youth speaker but the hall was so full of young people and many young people got opportunity to share their views. As a result, Mr. Joseph Deiss put a strong emphasis on young peoples’ leadership in the global HIV response on his concluding statement, which shows his very strong support for youth activists. It’s likely that this was the first time that this sort of interaction session has happened in UN General Assembly Hall. Young people in the GA Hall were on Twitter, Facebook, and their blogs, and helped to strengthen youth voices through social media. Statements in support of youth were spreading like light waves.

Finally when June came, negotiations on the outcome document were not very supportive of a rights-based society. Young people met a day before HLM to orient, discuss and map where we need to move ahead during and beyond HLM. This youth summit served as a platform to guide people new to the UN through the processes, UN lingo and action items to take back to their countries after the HLM on AIDS.

At the end of the HLM, there were discussions over positive and negative aspects of the declaration, focusing specifically on language (or a lack thereof) on young MSM, young people living with HIV, young sex workers and young transgender. The document is strong in its mention of key affected population, yet weak in its emphasis on 'family values,' which often leaves young people out of services and information and restricts access to prevention commodities. Also, there were youth on many national delegations, the Secretary General also focused on young people on his opening speech, and the President of the General Assembly was supportive to young people. There aren’t many revolutionary achievements for young people to mention but getting into that old UN system wasn't very easy and young people were able to do that, which is really a good start. While the HLM shows progress, it wasn’t perfect.

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Rachel Arinii Judhistari - RFP Asia Pacific

Where’s the money for Young Women and Girls initiatives?

Youth employability, basic livelihood and entrepreneurship are the main targets for the international donor community in giving support for young people’s issues. Yet the issues of young people’s gender equality, human rights and health (especially sexual and reproductive rights, including HIV/AIDS) have become sidelined . On top of that, according to the research on the funding needs for young feminist initiatives by AWID, the pressure on funding has doubled for the initiatives that address issues facing young women and girls and accessing sustainable funding is a major barrier. Financing young peoples’ issues is still perceived as a luxury. Globally, most of young women’s initiatives rely on small grants or temporary fund mechanism given by donor agencies, and face issues such as delays in transfer, uncertainty about long term funding support and the perception by adult allies within the donor community that young people (especially women) lack grant management skills.

The role of young people’s on donor community internal governance system

In addressing the scarcity of funding for young peoples’ initiatives, women’s organizations like IWHC and ARROW have started to give specific funding for financing young people’s activities. There are also thematic grant mechanisms like the HIV Young Leaders Fund and FRIDA-Young Feminist Fund, that function to support young people’s initiatives. In addition, the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM) has specific role for young people to join their civil society board. But what’s the impact of this platform? The outcomes that affect youth movement-building haven’t been documented well, and this needs to change.

FRIDA-Young Feminist Fund:

FRIDA (Flexibility, Resourcefulness, Inclusivity, Diversity and Action) is a new initiatives to fund young feminist-led activism around the world. The fund will be launched next year, on 2012. FRIDA’s vision is to invest in the young women movement building, to be stronger and well-resourced in order to be able to reflect the diversity of women’s rights. FRIDA believes in the power of young women as agents of change and in progressive youth leadership that can challenge and transform existing power dynamics.

What’s most interesting about FRIDA is that young people became the active player since the initial insemination of this initiative. FRIDA’s advisor was selected from young people whose have experience and engagement with local, national and global youth movement. GYCA has become part of the group.

HIV/AIDS is not often considered to be a women’s rights issues, even as women, especially young women, become the face of newly infected case of HIV. HIV/AIDS initiatives led by young women should be also considered as women’s rights initiatives.

Recommendations and ways forward:

1. Document the power dynamic between youth network and donor community to be able to strengthen and scale up our partnership.


2. Develop a safe space for donor community and youth network to engage and identified the mechanism and kind of support required for a sustainable investment in youth movement.


3. Encourage the donor community to support organizational development and core cost of youth network in order to ensure the sustainability of the movement. Cheap and free labor are the violation of human rights and undermine our impact.

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Key GYCA highlights from the HLM on AIDS

Members and staff of the Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS (GYCA) were very active participating in different activities of the High Level Meeting on AIDS last week. We want to share some highlights with you:

GYCA Meeting: On June 6th, many people from GYCA present in New York met to discuss some of the present challenges of the Coalition. Regional Focal Points, National Focal Points, staff and interns were joined by Jennifer Corriero and Sean Keith, Executive Director and Operations Manager of TakingITGlobal, a Canadian youth organization of which GYCA is a program. The conversations started during this meeting will continue after the High Level Meeting on Youth when GYCA will hold a close training for some RFPs and staff members to strengthen our current structure and the plans for the future. We had participants like Mawethu Zita from South Africa, Guffran Rostom from Mauritius, Ajay Kumar from Nepal, Christian Bayingana from Rwanda, Lindsay Menard-Freeman, Oceane Hooks-Camilleri and Reshma Pattni from USA, Sydney Hushie from Ghana and Ivens Reyner from Brazil.

Key events: Ricardo Baruch from Mexico participated at the side event "Young People in the AIDS Response" co-organized by the Inter-Agency Task Team on Young People and HIV where he spoke about the importance of the Mali Call to Action and the strengthening of youth organizations. Read more about the event.

Lindsay Menard-Freeman spoke on a panel 'Prevention and Protection Save Lives: Girls, Women and HIV,' where she had the chance to talk about why empowering young women could make a difference on the AIDS response.

Member Activities: Several members participated on the March to End AIDS on the first day of the HLM right after the opening plenary at the General Assembly of the UN. Most of the GYCA members also participated on the different panels and side events that took part during the 3 days of the High Level Meeting where many discussions took place related to funding, leadership, human rights and treatment on the HIV response. The German Government invited a number of young people to a reception where the Ambassador talked about how important is for the German government to work hard on young people’s issues. The event was also a good opportunity for young delegates to share their experiences among themselves.

Dialogue with governments and countries: Several members had meetings with their governments including Gerardo Camacho from Bolivia, Stefanie Suclupe from Peru and Mariana Iacono from Argentina. They were able to influence the speeches of their Ministers and Ambassadors as well as general positions for future negotiations on issues related to HIV and also sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Partnerships: GYCA staff was part of a continuous conversation with the secretariat of UNAIDS in order to strengthen their long term strategy for young people along with the other youth partners that were involved on the organizations of many of the events of the HLM including Advocates for Youth, GNP+, the HIV Young Leaders Fund, Youth Coalition, Youth RISE, and the World AIDS Campaign. There were also other opportunities to discuss the plans for the High Level Meeting on Youth with the partners of the International Year of Youth strategy which includes UNFPA.

Closing Meeting: On the last day of the HLM, June 10th, GYCA members and other young delegates met to debrief about the successes and challenges of the HLM and the whole process leading to it. There were also some commitments made to ensure that the information generated at the UN will be shared at the national level and that promises made by governments and agencies will be followed up. Most of the participants of this last gathering were also involved on the Youth Summit that took place 1 day prior to the High Level Meeting.

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Political Advocacy E-Course May 2011

GYCA has just completed another round of its Political Advocacy E-course open to GYCA members and grantees of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation. Political Advocacy is a particularly challenging e-course because while participants develop a project idea from scratch, they must also connect their ideas to goals they have for tangible policy change. Course materials also include leadership team development and campaign time line management. Upon completing the e-course participants have a solid campaign and action plan which can be presented to possible funders.

The students who have just completed this round of the e-course developed projects focused on a range of topics ranging from women's education to behavioural change among soldiers to availability of ARV's in rural villages. Participants were from Nigeria, Somalia, Palestine, Kenya, Rwanda, Egypt, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Nepal, Cameroon, South Africa, Myanmar, and Zimbabwe.

This course was facilitated by Lindsay Menard-Freeman, GYCA Program Director and Oceane Hooks-Camilleri, GYCA's Program Intern. Taking into account suggestions from previous courses this course utilized social media to engage participants through a Facebook group where discussion questions and valuable recourses were posted. Class chats were held twice weekly, offering an opportunity for participants to interact with facilitators in real time.

Participants have stated that this course has challenged them to develop there project and campaign ideas as well as given them valuable resources for personal development as leaders. The goal of the e-course is to make sure that young people have the skills and resources they need to go to their government and demand sustainable change.

Herbert Bangura expressed his experience as follows, "I truly appreciate this course because it is an eye opener to a lot of things especially with regards to planning a successful advocacy campaign. Believe it or not, there is indeed a lot of knowledge gained during the duration of this course, as the materials are very rich."

Many of the participants second Herbert’s sentiments that this course has been valuable to their campaign development as well as their understanding of how to advocate for their communities.

The GYCA E-Course Team looks forward to running our next e-course round (Project Management) starting on September 5, 2011. We’ll be sending out a Call for Application soon, so keep watch!

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