World AIDS Campaign (WAC)

Partnership is core to this advocacy effort. Between 1997 and 2004 The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) coordinated the World AIDS Campaign as a loose partnership of UN agencies, governments, and all sectors of civil society campaigning around particular themes related to HIV and AIDS. Then, WAC became independent of UNAIDS; it advocates and campaigns as part of and with the support of a broader constituency from civil society which includes trade unions, faith-based organisations (FBOs), youth movements, academics, and the science and the business community. A key strategy, then, involves fostering an alliance of HIV and AIDS campaigns, linking local efforts for global impact.

While raising public awareness is a starting point for the WAC, the effort goes beyond awareness campaigning to focus on advocacy. Its aim is to galvanise action at the level of the individual, the nation, and globally by advocating for the fulfillment of the 2001 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) Declaration of Commitment on HIV and AIDS and subsequent policy commitments on HIV and AIDS. Accordingly, the 2005-2010 umbrella theme is "Stop AIDS. Keep the Promise", which is based on the notion that people have a right to hold the international community to account for promises made and progress towards keeping them. The idea is that everyone can contribute, whether by privately making a promise to support the campaign and its work or by actively promoting the campaign with friends and colleagues.

Based on the observation that "the unique roles of civil society organisations (CSOs) in advocacy, policy-setting, implementing HIV/AIDS programmes and service delivery remain insufficiently articulated, acknowledged or understood at many levels", WAC takes specific actions to organise CSOs to more effectively use their voices to encourage policymakers to take concrete action. For example, WACC is providing a forum for discussion and debate focusing on major AIDS-related geopolitical milestones in 2005-06, centring on the review of progress with implementing the UNGASS Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS. The format of this initiative, titled "Keep the Promise: Start Making Sense!" includes a dedicated online discussion eForum (click here for a summary), ad hoc round table sessions in face-to-face meetings (including regional/national HIV/AIDS meetings), and south-north videoconferences. In this way, the initiative explores how civil society can work together to contribute to HIV/AIDS-related policy setting, advocacy, and programme implementation.

At the core of this advocacy activity each year is World AIDS Day (December 1), a day dedicated each year to focusing worldwide attention on HIV and AIDS (click here for a summary of the 2005 event; click here to read about some of the specific events happening around the world). However, the WAC encourages participants to not just focus on World AIDS Day but to use every opportunity to challenge the world to do more for those people infected, affected and at risk of HIV and AIDS and will help identify key opportunities to do so. Information and communication technology (ICT) is one tool that WAC is using; for instance, one section of the WAC website offers case studies from campaign participants on "what works" in terms of advocacy, social mobilisation, partnership building, skills sharing, fundraising, and public awareness building. Click here to access this information.

HIV/AIDS.