HIV and AIDS: Call for UK Delegation to Deliver for World's Most Vulnerable Children

World Leaders will next week participate in a review at the United Nations headquarters in New York of progress made on global agreements to reach Millennium Development Goal 6 to reverse the spread of HIV and AIDS by 2015.

In advance of the 2006 High Level Meeting on AIDS, Save the Children UK is calling upon the UK delegation to do all it can to deliver what is needed for some of the world’s most vulnerable children.

They are urging the UK government to ensure the meeting delivers for children affected by HIV and AIDS. Whilst they strongly support the government’s commitments made so far on HIV and AIDS, they believe there are major issues to address at the UN where UK leadership is desperately needed.

Save the Children UK calls for UN member states to further commit to:

• intensify efforts to deliver a multi-sectoral response to protect rights to care, prevention and treatment for children orphaned and made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS by promoting national child-oriented policies and plans; including developing social protection systems to support orphans and vulnerable children their families and carers;
• providing free health care for children, providing cotrimoxazole to all those children known to be living with HIV and eliminating school fees and associated costs of school attendance;
• support research and development on simple and affordable diagnostics and paediatric ART formulations and ensure that children are included in national and international treatment targets;
• ensure the full enjoyment of human rights for children orphaned and made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS; intensifying efforts to register all births, providing legal frameworks for children to access services and to protect their inheritance rights and encouraging children’s participation in the design of child-focused programmes

Save the Children UK expects donor countries, particularly the G8, to surpass the expenditure targets set at UNGASS in 2001, which they did not meet. Now is the time to deliver the resources needed to provide more and better care for children and families.

Save the Children UK have applauded the UK’s spending commitment of 10 per cent of its HIV and AIDS related expenditure to meet the needs of children affected by HIV and AIDS. They hope this will grow. In the meantime, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) must do more to demonstrate through gender and age disaggregated data statistics how this is reaching children.

Further information

• 2006 High Level Meeting on AIDS
• UK Consortium on AIDS and International Development Working Group on Orphans and Vulnerable Children: 2006 UNGASS Review - Recommendations for the Commitments for Children Affected by HIV and AIDS
• CRIN's thematic page on HIV and AIDS

COMING SOON: Special CRINMAIL on HIV and AIDS