Themes

Listening to the Voices: 
Stronger and More Effective Partnership for Sustained Impact

The Global Fund is a partnership between governments, civil society, the private sector, affected communities and technical partners. This partnership informs the division of labor between the Global Fund and other international, multilateral, bilateral and national actors, and is expressed at the different levels of the Global Fund’s work: in the way proposals are developed and programmes are implemented at the country level, and the way in which policy, operational and funding decisions are taken in the Global Fund’s governing bodies.

Discussions at Partnership Forum 2008 aimed to identify ways to further improve the way in which the different public and private partners of the Global Fund on the national, regional and global levels work together. They focused on

• broadening participation in the development and implementation of programmes to currently under-represented groups, and
• ways to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the partnership through a more clearly defined division of labor and responsibilities between the different partners.

These discussions were structured along five issue areas:

Partnership and Gender

The Global Fund aims to ensure that the programmes it supports appropriately address the needs of women and girls, men and boys as well as sexual minorities, in order to ensure real impact on the three epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. To this end, the Global Fund is developing a gender strategy to ensure gender equity and equality and, in a closely linked process, a strategy to better take account of the specific situations of sexual minorities. Given the disproportionate burden placed on women and girls in societies affected by these diseases, the strategy identifies transformative actions which the Global Fund can take, within its financing model and role, to ensure greater impact for women and girls.  Similarly, the particular challenges faced by sexual minorities and other marginalized groups are reflected in a targeted strategy to ensure their challenges, especially as they relate to the right to health, are addressed.

Discussions focused on the role of the Global Fund in supporting, encouraging and promoting gender-sensitive programmes:

1. Women and girls

• What kinds of interventions are proven to be effective in meeting the needs and reducing the vulnerability of women and girls?

• What good practices exist within Global Fund grants that help build a better evidence base and manage knowledge better in relation to interventions that address gender inequalities, and how can these be captured and shared?

• What should be done to enhance the capacities for programme development, implementation and advocacy of organizations working for women and girls? What should a technical assistance system look like that addresses this need?

• What measures should be taken, and by whom, to ensure that the needs of women and girls are properly reflected in the development of programme proposals?

2. Sexual minorities

• What kinds of interventions are proven to be effective in improving sexual minorities’ access to health services and reducing their vulnerability to the three diseases?

• What should be done to enhance the capacities for programme development, implementation and advocacy of organizations working for sexual minorities? What would a technical assistance system look like that addresses this need?

• What measures should be taken, and by whom, to ensure that the needs of sexual minorities are properly reflected in the development of programme proposals? 

• What good practices exist within Global Fund grants that help build a better evidence base and manage knowledge better on the issue of sexual minorities, and how can these be captured and shared?

Partnership and Demand

The Global Fund, jointly with its stakeholders and partners, is reviewing the way in which it works to help countries to develop high-quality programmes that are ambitious and scaled-up. The different options for Global Fund support for programmes will be streamlined, and timelines for grant applications and proposal review will be adjusted in response to the experiences made to date. In order to meet the need that exists in countries, donors have made it clear that they are ready to support scaled up proposals if the technical quality of those proposals is good and implementation feasible.

Discussions focused on measures the Global Fund and/or its partners and stakeholders could take to support countries in taking advantage of the new funding structures:

• What capacity development needs (infrastructure/human resources/health systems, planning/governance/financial management, technical assistance) have to be met to enable the scaling-up of programmes?
• What are the obstacles at country and regional levels that inhibit the expression of demand, and how could these obstacles be removed?
• What measures could be taken, and by whom, to address the challenges related to the effective involvement of all relevant actors/sectors, including currently under-represented groups, in the development of programmes at country level?
• How can the Global Fund ensure more coherent messaging at the country level to build the confidence necessary for scaling-up?
• What measures should be taken, and by whom, to ensure better predictability of sustainable funding, to allow for ambitious scaling-up of programmes while maintaining successful ongoing interventions?
• What kind of support do countries need to develop comprehensive national strategies (capacity development, technical assistance)?

Partnership and Coordination

The partnership environment and mechanisms underwent a comprehensive review as part of the Five-Year Evaluation of the Global Fund. The Global Fund will now develop a Partnership Strategy which ttempts to create a coherent approach to this area of work and establish responsibilities and accountabilities for all partners.

To contribute to this strategy, discussions, with reference to the recommendations presented in the Five Year Evaluation study area on Partnership, focused on the appropriate division of labor between the Global Fund and its partners at the global, regional and country levels, including governments, multi- and bilateral organizations, civil society and the private sector, as well as measures that the Global Fund should take to increase the efficiency, effectiveness and accountability of its partnerships:

• What division of labor between the Global Fund and other global actors (including bi- and multilateral organizations) would be effective with regard to fiduciary arrangements, oversight and technical assistance?
• What measures are appropriate for the Global Fund to take to ensure the effectiveness of its partnerships for programme development, implementation, resource mobilization and advocacy (e.g. the provision of (regular) opportunities for information exchange and networking; the integration of specific actors in consultative and decision making bodies; guidelines or sets of requirements issued by the Global Fund; formal agreements, or joint policy-making, with specific partners; etc)?
• How could the working relationships between the Global Fund Secretariat and country-level actors be made more effective?

Partnership and Implementation

As a funding mechanism, the Global Fund does not work directly on implementation with countries. Instead it relies on a wide partnership to support and facilitate the implementation of grants so that the funded services and interventions are effectively delivered. The Global Fund’s various disbursement, oversight and review processes, though, have a profound impact on the way in which actors at the country level structure the implementation of their programmes. It is important to capture best practice and good examples of successful implementation, to define the barriers and obstacles that impede implementation, and to develop measures to overcome these.

Discussions focused on measures that have been and could be taken by the different partners – implementers, providers of technical assistance, the Global Fund Secretariat and Board – to increase the efficiency of programme implementation:

• What measures would increase the capacities of country-level governance and administrative structures for Global Fund grants (Country Coordinating Mechanisms, Principal Recipients, Sub-Recipients, Local Fund Agents, Dual Track Financing)?
• What could the Global Fund do to better support the involvement of non-governmental actors (civil society, including community-level organizations; the private sector) in the implementation of programmes?
• What options exist to better align Global Fund oversight mechanisms - for progress monitoring, reporting, evaluation - with the requirements of national programmes and those supported by other donors?
• What measures could be taken to improve procurement and supply chain management?