Mbn hiv/aids evaluation final report Team of consultants

5.5. Conclusions on the overall evaluation question

To what extent can the CFA’S funding strategies, policies and practices in the period 2001-2004 be valued as a meaningful contribution to the fight against HIV/AIDS in the regions of Southern Africa and South Asia.
All CFAs showed commitment to integrate HIV/AIDS in their core functions and considerable progress can be noted since 2001 regarding the response of the CFAs to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. HIV/AIDS policies, funding strategies and action plans were approved and are implemented in various forms and intensity between the different CFAs. However, follow-up of these policies and knowledge management of HIV/AIDS remains limited. Furthermore, outputs and outcomes by counterparts remain somehow limited due to the small scale of their interventions and classical approaches without a lot of innovative results that may radiate to the bigger actors (donors) in the HIV/AIDS area. More leadership in this sector is only possible through an increased investment in new and innovative approaches or in the development of concepts on crucial issues such as for example the ‘Guidelines for donors to fund workplace policies for counterparts’.
Although the contribution of the CFAs to the fight against HIV/AIDS can be valued as meaningful, as made clear here above in the conclusions of the four evaluation questions, the worldwide HIV/AIDS picture however remains depressive and important change in sexual behaviour making the difference cannot be observed, particularly with men’s behaviour in most of the visited countries, also denial and stigmatisation remain important problems in the daily fight against the epidemic. An intensified response is needed.
All HIV/AIDS policies approved by the CFAs subscribe the gender – HIV/AIDS relationship as being fundamental in their fight against HIV/AIDS. The evaluation team, however, did not find well drawn up strategy or action plans for the implementation of those policies. The first joint initiative in that direction is the ‘Gender, women and HIV/AIDS’ paper of the SAN Gender Project group (5 December 2005). Under the assessment and achievements of EQ 3 and 4 two tables show clearly that although the counterparts are gender sensitive in their HIV/AIDS programmes, responding well but in a classical way to the needs of women by giving them access to all kind of HIV/AIDS services, they do not respond effectively to the empowerment of women or the necessity to change the relationship between men and women in a HIV/AIDS context. As a result women have fewer opportunities to use all the HIV/AIDS services as long as the counterparts’ programmes do not address the underlying socio-economic and cultural issues that drive the epidemic. Addressing absolute poverty, especially among women, and all forms of societal violence they and their children experience on a daily basis, are prerequisites to win the fight against HIV/AIDS.