CHANGES TO THE GLOBAL FUND’S CCM GUIDELINES

Author:

Bernard Rivers

Article Type:

Article Number: 3

ABSTRACT The Fund has modified its CCM Guidelines in three ways: to recommend that "key affected populations" be represented on CCMs; to reflect a new mechanism for funding CCM administrative costs; and to give examples of types of civil society and private sector representation that are most relevant to the work of CCMs.

the Purpose, Structure, Composition and Funding for Country Coordinating Mechanisms and Requirements for Grant Eligibility”). The Board made three major changes or additions:

1. The Board added “key affected populations” to the list of sectors that the Global Fund recommends be represented on CCMs (as reported by GFO in Issue #80).
2. The Board adopted a new mechanism for funding the administrative costs of CCMs (as reported by GFO, also in Issue #80).
3. The Board adopted new guidelines on the types of civil society and private sector representation it believes are most relevant to the work of CCMs.

The purpose of this article is to describe some of these modifications in more detail, and to indicate where readers can obtain additional information.

Note: The revised CCM Guidelines document is available in English at www.theglobalfund.org/en/apply/mechanisms/guidelines. Versions provided on that page in other languages do not yet reflect all the changes discussed in this article.

Key affected populations

In the revised CCM Guidelines, the Global Fund states that “in order to ensure vulnerable and marginalized groups are adequately represented, the Global Fund strongly encourages CCMs to consider how to improve the representation and participation of representatives from such groups on the CCM, taking into account the scale of the national epidemic of the three diseases and the key affected populations in the national context.” The CCM Guidelines cite the following UNAIDS definition of “affected populations”: “women and girls, youth, men who have sex with men (MSM), injecting and other drug users, sex workers, people living in poverty, prisoners, migrant laborers, people in conflict and post-conflict situations, refugees and internally displaced persons.”

The CCM Guidelines recommend that key affected populations should be among the non-government sectors making up at least 40 percent of the CCM.

The CCM Guidelines do not provide any guidance with respect to how CCMs can improve representation from key affected populations. (The issue of how best to achieve representation from vulnerable groups is discussed in “The Aidspan Guide to Building and Running an Effective CCM – Second Edition,” available at www.aidspan.org/guides.)

Funding for CCMs

On 21 December 2007, the Global Fund Secretariat issued a communiqué (in English) to CCMs providing details on the new funding policy for CCMs, and explaining how CCMs can initiate a request for funding. The communiqué says that the Secretariat will start accepting applications as of 1 January 2008. The text of the communiqué is available at www.theglobalfund.org/en/media_center/press/an_071221.asp.

The Secretariat has also prepared a CCM Funding Request Form. It is available in the six official U.N. languages ( English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Chinese) at www.theglobalfund.org/en/apply/mechanisms. The Form, an Excel file, includes a section for the CCM to provide details on the CCM funding budget. Finally, the Secretariat has prepared guidelines on the new CCM funding policy. English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic versions of the guidelines are available at www.theglobalfund.org/en/apply/mechanisms; versions in French and Chinese are expected to be posted on the same site shortly.

Guidelines on Civil Society and Private Sector Representation

The English version of the revised CCM Guidelines document contains an annex entitled “Guidelines on Types of Civil Society and Private Sector Representation Most Relevant to the Work of CCMs” (hereinafter “Representation Guidelines”). The Global Fund says that the Representation Guidelines “are intended to provide guidance for CCMs wishing to strengthen and/or improve” representation from these sectors, particularly in light of the CCMs’ roles in proposal development and grant oversight.

The Representation Guidelines contain lists of the types of representation from civil society and the private sector that the Global Fund suggests be included on CCMs. The list for civil society representatives is as follows:

• vulnerable groups/key populations
• women’s organisations
• children and young people
• international NGOs working in the three diseases
• experienced national NGOs working in the three diseases
• religious and faith-based groups
• academia

The list for private sector representatives is as follows:

• large for-profit companies with a proven commitment to fight the three diseases
• organisations representing small- and mid-sized enterprises and the informal sector
• business associations to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria
• representatives from exposed industries
• private practitioners and for-profit clinics
• charitable foundations established by corporations

The lists are not meant to be exhaustive.

The Representation Guidelines provide a rationale for including each type of representation on the lists. For example, for women’s organisations, the Guidelines state that “women and young girls are often most affected by the three diseases and are particularly vulnerable due to physiological as well as socio-economic factors. It is important that women’s organizations, as well as other organizations representing the concerns of women, are well-represented on CCMs to ensure that programmatic issues relating to gender are reflected in proposals to the Global Fund.”