DSG/SM/1666

Deputy Secretary-General Calls for Deepened Investments in AIDS-Free Future, Addressing Structured Funding Dialogue

Following is the text of UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed’s video message to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) Structured Funding Dialogue, today:

I am pleased to join you at this UNAIDS Structured Funding Dialogue.  Our health is a bedrock not only for life itself.  It is essential to achieving nearly all of the Sustainable Development Goals and tackling inequalities.

Like HIV before it, COVID-19 is demonstrating once again how pandemics ravage our interconnected world.  And it is also revealing the thread of inequalities that run through all modern crises — from COVID and conflicts to the climate emergency and HIV.

That’s why I am so encouraged by the leadership your Governments have shown in gathering around a bold new Global AIDS Strategy.  And adopting an equally bold new General Assembly political plan to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030 by tackling inequalities front and centre.

UNAIDS has a critical role to play in this journey.  It is a catalytic force that galvanizes urgent action to end AIDS.  And [it] has always been a leader — a powerful global voice of equality and justice within the United Nations family.

But the Organization can only achieve this essential work with support.  That’s what this funding dialogue is all about, and I strongly support its goal to achieve a fully funded Joint Programme.

This is in line with commitments made in the Funding Compact to increase the share of core funding to the United Nations development system, to increase predictability and drive sustainable results.

UNAIDS contributors have led by example in that regard.  I urge you to continue to play that role and increase your core contributions to this organization and the incredible, life-saving work its women and men carry out around the world.

Investing in UNAIDS is smart.  It brings transformative action to life.

Of the total global funding for HIV responses in low- and middle-income countries, the 1 per cent that UNAIDS represents helps leverage billions more in investments to end HIV.  By generating data for the response.  By providing life-saving HIV prevention and treatment services.  By upholding the human rights of some of the most marginalized people.  By empowering young women and adolescent girls to access their sexual and reproductive health and rights.  And by reinforcing global health security through strong health, social protection and community systems.

My friends, every death from AIDS is avoidable.  And yet, someone dies from AIDS every minute.  Help us give this emergency the attention, and funding, it deserves.  Support UNAIDS as we work together — and invest together — in an AIDS-free future.

For information media. Not an official record.