Country Dialogue is “Country-Owned and -Led”

Author:

David Garmaise

Article Type:

Article Number: 4

ABSTRACT The Global Fund says that the country dialogue is owned and led by countries. The Fund says that it did not create the country dialogue, and that the new funding model will build on existing country dialogues.

As the Global Fund describes it, the “country dialogue” is not something that the Fund created. The Fund says that the term describes a dialogue that already occurs, or at least should be occurring, among the country coordinating mechanism (CCM), implementers, technical partners, donors, governments, civil society and key affected populations.

The Global Fund says that the country dialogue is country-owned and country-led. Outputs from country dialogue often result in health-sector reviews, disease programme reviews and revised national strategic plans.

Under the NFM, the country dialogue will be enhanced. The Global Fund says that the country dialogue will “continue to help prioritize high-impact interventions for Global Fund funding while diagnosing human rights barriers and developing a plan to address them.”

The Global Fund says that in the context of the new funding model, the country dialogue should focus on some general elements and on some elements that are specific to the development of the concept note. The general elements consist of reviewing the disease, health and human rights landscape; conducting programme reviews and related research; identifying funding gaps; and prioritising which initiatives will be included in the concept note.

The elements specific to the concept note include ensuring that the CCM is functioning properly; determining timelines for development of the concept note; discussing the qualitative factors that can affect a country’s indicative funding allocation; determining the split for indicative funding among the disease components and health and community systems strengthening; and determining implementation arrangements.

With respect to the programme reviews, the Global Fund says that these reviews should evaluate the entire country programme, not just the activities supported by the Global Fund, and that they should make recommendations for how financing can be better targeted to achieve outcomes and impact. The Fund says that programme reviews should occur regularly and can be supported by funds from Global Fund grants.

Concerning the functioning of the CCM, as part of the country dialogue process the CCM will be expected to identify topics that require discussion and to arrange for the discussions to take place. The CCM will be asked to agree on how it will ensure that discussions on the disease split and the review of the draft concept note are done in a transparent and inclusive manner. The Global Fund says that if key affected populations (or their advocates), major donors and technical partners are not part of the CCM, they must be included in these discussions and offered the opportunity to submit comments to the Secretariat when the concept note is submitted.

The Fund’s Transition Manual provides additional information on the country dialogue.

NFM-related materials produced by the Global Fund are available on the Fund’s website here.