From September 11 to 13, the Global Fund Implementer Voting Group (ImG) will hold a retreat in Dakar, Senegal, with the central theme of ‘Advancing country ownership and political will’. This will be the implementers’ group’s third such retreat, beginning in 2017.

In 2016, the ImG developed its first ‘Roadmap’, which prioritized work areas around strengthening the implementer group, sustainability and transition, absorptive capacity, and human rights, gender and key populations. At the 2017 retreat, each of these workstreams was carried through to the 2017-2019 Roadmap. In 2018, at the ImG retreat in Kampala, Uganda, constituencies shared priority concerns, and strengthened shared understandings and collaborations.

The 2019 retreat aims to build on these previous discussions, and to develop “agreed actions” in an informal setting, while exploring – with the group’s new leadership, Chair Filipe da Costa and Vice-Chair Maurine Murenga – new ways of working.

Da Costa told the GFO that he hoped that the retreat would see “more active participation of all delegates,” and that points discussed at the meeting would be brought back to the respective constituencies or Country Coordinating Mechanisms. “I believe if we all (donor and implementer) are united, focused, and put all our efforts, ideas and resources towards controlling, preventing and treating the three diseases, we will be able to eliminate them by 2030,” Da Costa said.

Specific objectives of the three-day meeting include to strengthen action to advance country ownership and political will; to identify the ImG’s priorities, strategies and positions in relation to Global Fund Board decisions; and to explore progress made against the ImG’s 2017-2019 Roadmap (and agree on collective actions for a future roadmap).

The outputs will consist of an agreed list of priorities, strategies and positions of the ImG on priority issues for the Global Fund Board, concrete action steps to strengthen the current Roadmap, processes to guide future working modalities, a draft ‘ways of working’ document for the ImgG, and a report on the meeting itself.

Retreat sessions

Main sessions during the meeting will deal with an update of the ImG Roadmap 2018-2019, reportbacks from the Chair or Vice-Chair of each of the Global Fund Board’s three committees (Audit and Finance; Ethics and Governance; Strategy); country ownership and political will; “maximising impact,” which includes the topic of Country Coordinating Mechanism evolution; building resilient and sustainable systems for health (including the topic of absorptive capacity); and the Board’s Governance Culture Initiative.

The final day’s sessions include one on mobilizing increased resources (with the expected participation of Global Fund Head of Resource Mobilization Francoise Vanni), and further sessions on human rights and gender equality; sustainability and transition; and agreeing key priorities and actions for the ImG Roadmap 2019.

On the Global Fund Board, of the total number of 28 seats, twenty are ‘voting’ seats, of which ten represent implementer constituencies, and ten represent donor constituencies. The Implementer Voting Group is made of up representatives from these implementer constituencies.

The Implementer Group’s retreat will take place in Dakar, Senegal, on September 11-13. The GFO will report more fully on the content of the meeting in a later edition.