The Global Fund at a Crossroads

There is an urgent need to revive and re-energize civil society advocacy to hold the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria accountable to its origins and founding principles. Recent changes in Global Fund policy and practice have taken it away from the country-driven character that set it apart from other aid agencies. It risks becoming less centered on rights-based strategies to support national responses to AIDS, TB, and malaria.

In April 2015, the Open Society Public Health Program convened a consultation of experts and advocates concerned about the future of the Global Fund, particularly in these key areas:

• preserving support to important programs in middle-income countries
• realizing the Global Fund’s human rights objectives
• supporting access to essential medicines

Without concerted and well-informed efforts by advocates the Global Fund risks repudiating its own history, undermining its investments, and damaging its stature as a leader in global health. Furthermore, the Global Fund’s ambitious strategy to end the epidemics by 2030 will be a pipe dream without a reinvigoration of commitments in these three key areas. 

This briefing paper summarizes the deliberations of the consultation, and provides recommendations that the Global Fund should undertake in order to uphold its founding values.