Civil society organizations push for a target of $18 billion for the Global Fund’s Sixth Replenishment

Author:

David Garmaise

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Article Number: 0

The current $14 billion target will not allow for scale-up, CSOs say

ABSTRACT At the preparatory meeting for the Global Fund’s Sixth Replenishment, held on 7–8 February 2019 in New Delhi, civil society organizations called for a “bold” replenishment target of $18 billion. This is $4 billion higher than the $14 billion target announced by the Global Fund. An investment of $14 billion would not allow for scaling up programs to put countries on track to reach the 2030 targets for the three diseases, the CSOs said.

Organizations representing civil society have renewed their call for a more ambitious target for the Global Fund’s Sixth Replenishment.

On the occasion of the preparatory meeting for the replenishment, held on 7–8 February 2019 in New Delhi, India, the Global Fund Advocates Network (GFAN), communities and civil society called for a “bold” replenishment target of $18 billion. This is $4 billion higher than the $14 billion target announced by the Global Fund on 11 January. At that time, several civil society organizations (CSOs) said that the target was not sufficiently ambitious (see article from GFO 349).

The call for an $18 billion target was contained in a statement from Communities and Civil Society.

In an accompanying statement, GFAN stated that the $14-billion target represents “a maintenance level of funding” and would not allow for programs to be scaled up to put countries on track to reach the 2030 targets for the three diseases.

The $14-billion target is just $1 billion (or 8%) higher than the $13-billion target for the last replenishment in 2016.

GFAN and other CSOs also expressed concerns about some of the projections and estimates in the Global Fund’s Investment Case.

(A summary of the Investment Case was released on 11 January; the full document was published on the Global Fund website at the time of the preparatory meeting.)

The CSOs said they were concerned that total projected resources from all sources for the grant implementation period 2021-2023 –– $83.0 billion –– was $18 billion shy of the $101 billion that the Investment Case estimates is required to fight the three diseases. (See Table 1 below.)

Table 1: Estimated need and projected funding for 2021–2023, as per the Investment Case

The CSOs said they were also concerned that the $46 billion projected for domestic funding for 2021-2023 represents a 48% increase compared to the $31.1 billion from domestic funding for the current period (2018-2020). The CSOs also noted that the majority of the projected $17 billion increase in total funding – from $66 billion in 2018-2020 to $83 billion in 2021-2023 – is expected to come from domestic funding.

The CSOs questioned whether these expectations for domestic funding were realistic. “Many low-income countries continue to require international assistance for health to supplement low levels of resources budgeted for health,” the CSOs stated.

“With only 11 years left to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” the CSOs said, “it is time to step up our efforts. 2019 marks a crucial milestone in the fight against AIDS, TB and malaria, which calls for bold action.”

Bold action against the three diseases, the CSOs affirmed, means adopting bold fund-raising targets.

Representatives from the communities and civil society constituencies reiterated the concerns about the $14-billion target at the preparatory meeting in New Delhi and they expressed the hope that the Fund will be able to raise more than $14 billion. Participants from other constituencies did not raise similar concerns.

In a related development, Ireland has announced that for the Sixth Replenishment it will increase its contribution by 50% (to €45 million from the €30 million it pledged for the Fifth Replenishment). The announcement was made at the African Leadership Meeting in Addis Ababa on February 9. The first country to pledge for the Sixth Replenishment, however, was Luxembourg, which announced a commitment of €9 million, up 11% from its Fifth Replenishment pledge.

Additional reporting for this article was contributed from Addis Ababa by Aidspan CEO Ida Hakizinka.

Further reading:

• The Global Fund’s news release on the Preparatory Meeting in New Delhi
• The Global Fund’s Investment Case Summary: Sixth Replenishment 2019
• The Global Fund’s Investment Case: Sixth Replenishment 2019 (full version)