What are the core functions of UNAIDS that most need to be sustained through any future transition, from APCOM’s perspective?
1. Global Leadership of the HIV Response
UNAIDS remains the only UN entity with a singular mandate to end AIDS. Its ability to coordinate UN cosponsors ensures coherence, avoids duplication, and keeps HIV visible within broader development agendas. Communities consistently emphasize that without this central leadership, the response risks fragmentation, competing priorities, and the erosion of hardwon gains. UNAIDS’ leadership is especially critical in a context where HIV has fallen off political agendas and where key populations continue to face criminalization and shrinking civic space.
2. Accountability Mechanisms
Communities rely on UNAIDS to track progress toward global HIV targets and to hold governments accountable for commitments on prevention, treatment, human rights, and financing. UNAIDS’ data systems, reporting frameworks, and targetsetting processes are indispensable for monitoring equity and access. Without an independent accountability body, there is a real risk that national reporting becomes selective, political, or disconnected from community realities.
3. Formal Governance Role for PLHIV and Key Populations
UNAIDS is the only UN body with formal representation of PLHIV and key populations on its governing board. This is a structural safeguard ensuring that lived experience, community evidence, and rights-based perspectives shape global policy and resource allocation. Communities view this governance role as nonnegotiable. Any transition that weakens or sidelines community representation would undermine the legitimacy and effectiveness of UNAIDS.
4. Protection of Human Rights
UNAIDS plays a unique role in advocating for the rights of communities most affected by HIV including sex workers, transgender people, people who use drugs, migrants, and people in prison especially in hostile political environments. Communities stress that no other UN agency consistently champions their rights across health, legal, and social protection systems.
Weakening this function would directly translate into reduced access to services, increased violence, and worsening inequalities.
5. Global HIV Surveillance
UNAIDS produces the most authoritative and trusted data on HIV prevalence, treatment access, new infections, and service gaps. This data informs donor strategies, national plans, and community advocacy. Beyond numbers, UNAIDS synthesizes research, community-led monitoring, and lived experience to shape global guidance that is grounded in realities on the ground. Communities rely on this function especially for key populations who are often invisible in national surveillance systems.
6. Convening and Multisectoral Coordination
UNAIDS’ ability to bring governments, communities, donors, UN agencies, and technical partners together are irreplaceable. This convening power ensures that the HIV response remains multisectoral, rights-based, and community-in-formed. Communities emphasize that no other agency has the mandate, credibility, or relationships to convene such diverse actors around a shared agenda. Losing this function would weaken collaboration, reduce political commitment, and undermine regional and national HIV strategies.
What recommendations does APCOM have?
These are taken from our submission to the High Level Panel:
1. Protect and expand multisectoral, community-centered approaches
Bringing together governments, civil society, PLHIV networks, key population groups, and UN agencies are the backbone of an effective HIV response. The transition must safeguard this model and ensure it remains fully resourced and politically supported. Without it, the region risks losing the only mechanism capable of reaching key populations, young people, and marginalized communities.
2. Prioritize the removal of legal, policy, and structural barriers
Punitive laws, stigma, and discrimination continue to undermine access to HIV, SRHR, and harm reduction services. The transition must not weaken UNAIDS’ human rights mandate.
Instead, it should strengthen support to countries in reforming harmful laws and policies, expanding rights-affirming frameworks, and ensuring that no community is left behind in the HIV response.
3. Institutionalize community leadership within UNAIDS governance and operations
Community-led organizations deliver essential services and are central to achieving the 30-80-60 targets, yet their sustainability remains fragile. The transition must formalize and protect community participation at all levels including regional, national, and global. This includes creating structured, resourced, and decision-making spaces for PLHIV networks and key population groups.
4. Safeguard and strengthen strategic information and data accountability
The UNAIDS Data Hub is a critical regional asset, providing strategic information that is often unavailable elsewhere. Its role in generating, synthesizing, and democratizing data especially key populations must be protected during the transition.
5. Preserve and reinforce UNAIDS’ convening power and political leverage
UNAIDS’ ability to bring governments, communities, donors, and UN agencies together is irreplaceable. The transition must maintain this convening mandate and ensure that UNAIDS continues to serve as a trusted, neutral platform for coordination, dialogue, and collective action.
Without this function, the coherence and rights-based orientation of the regional HIV response would be significantly weakened.
UNAIDS Supporting Community Leadership in Asia-Pacific: Taking Stock and Moving Forward
See also:
Other resources:
More information here:
Read the full Civil Society Statement of Priorities for the 2026 United Nations High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS
How Communities and Civil Society Can Influence the 2026 UN High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS
What APCOM did at the 2021 HLM
