Inter-Agency Task Team on Children and HIV and AIDS Progress report and Way Ahead

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Inter-Agency Task Team on Children and HIV and
AIDSProgress report and Way Ahead
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Inter-Agency Task Team on Children and HIV and
AIDS

• Established by UNAIDS committee of co-sponsoring
  agencies in March 2001
• Comprises specialists from UN agencies, civil
  society and donors
• Ensure effective implementation of global agenda
  for children and by HIV and AIDS as set out in
  Framework for Protection, Care and Support of
  Children living in a World with HIV and AIDS
• Promotes co-ordination, harmonisation and
  accelerated action
• Co-ordinate working groups on priority areas
  identified by Global Partners Forum
• Works closely with other IATTs e.g. Prevention of
  HIV infection of mothers and their children and
  Education IATT
• Co-ordinates closely with Joint Learning
  Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS
• Link closely with work of Regional Inter-Agency
  Task Teams (RIATTs)

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Working Groups established following Global
Partners Forum 2006

• Civil registration
• Communities role in the response
• Education
• Monitoring and Evaluation
• National Plans of Action
• Social Protection
• Food and nutrition (added later)
• IATT steering committee

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Targeting

• The IATT steering committee commissioned a paper
  on targeting AIDS mitigation resources
• The findings show that broader targeting is
  called for and appropriate in high prevalence
  settings where the majority or in some cases all
  children are more vulnerable because of the
  direct and/or indirect effects of AIDS

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Strengthening civil registration to promote
protection and services

• Chairs Plan International and UNICEF
• Commissioned research by the University of
  Pretoria including desk review across Africa, and
  case studies in Zambia and Uganda
• Research suggests HIV and AIDS does not affect
  availability of birth registration systems
• AIDS does affect accessibility to birth
  registration due to issues of physical and
  financial access
• Birth registration and certificates can provide
  access to basic services and protection
• Death certificates can protect childrens
  inheritance rights

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Civil registration way forward

• Birth registration should be incorporated into
  all programming related to HIV
• Greater advocacy needed for policy makers on
  benefits of civil registration for state and
  individuals
• Need legal framework for free and universal birth
  registration and accurate death registration
• More work needed to create demand from parents
  and children for birth registration
• Greater focus needed on wills and inheritance
  issues and address tension between customary and
  statutory law

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Strengthening communities role in the response

• Chair USG
• Overall objective of WG
• To influence behaviours and practice of
  multi-lateral and bilateral agencies and donors,
  private foundations and NGOs to get resources to
  communities with large numbers of children
  affected by HIV and AIDS and to support and
  monitor their appropriate use
• Issues paper on The role of international donors
  in supporting community responses to vulnerable
  children in countries severely affected by HIV
  and AIDS
• Paper identified range of models for directing
  resources to vulnerable households
• Despite commitments to promotion of child rights
  approaches, children affected by HIV and AIDS are
  often excluded from the design, implementation
  and monitoring of interventions
• There are a number of key challenges in
  monitoring programming at a community level.

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Supporting Communities Way forward

• Publication of issues paper and Executive summary
• Facilitate a donor forum to develop donor
  principles for supporting and financing
  communities, agreed by donors
• Develop accompanying dissemination and advocacy
  plan
• Revive WG members involvement in UNAIDS
  resource tracking work.

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Education

• Chair UNESCO and UNICEF
• Key achievements
• UNICEF and World Bank co-publication Integrating
  orphans and vulnerable children into education in
  Eastern and Southern Africa A Sourcebook case
  studies from Rwanda, Zambia, Tanzania, Swaziland,
  Uganda.
• Examines wide range of formal and non-formal
  approaches to provide education to especially
  vulnerable children in communities heavily
  affected by HIV/AIDS.
• Findings show that 1) international duty bearers
  need to direct sufficient resources toward
  building capacity at community level to increase
  sustainability and efficiency and, 2) the
  preventive and protective benefits of education
  are reduced where education delivered is of poor
  quality.
• UNICEF is coordinating a five-country study on
  Schools as Centres of Care and Support which
  focuses on integrating essential services into
  schools to support quality education for
  children.
• SADC working with the IATT on Education, UNESCO,
  UNICEF and MiET (Media in Education Trust) to
  scale up schools as centres of care and support
  in three southern African countries, Swaziland,
  Mozambique, and Zambia.
• Preliminary findings from the above study suggest
  that emphasis must be placed on both access and
  quality education.

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Education way forward

• Trends emerging from the Sourcebook cases as well
  as findings from
• the schools as centres for care and support study
  make evident the
• interdependence between access to and quality of
  education.
• While removing barriers to access to education is
  key to improving enrollment, concurrent emphasis
  needs to be placed on a comprehensive, holistic
  approach to quality education. Including a life
  skills curriculum content that is relevant to the
  lives of children affected by HIV/AIDS. This
  means that life skills and sex and reproductive
  health must be a core pillar of the curriculum,
  and the general syllabus is gender sensitive.
• The entire school environment must be child
  friendly and provide essential services that
  ensure the preventive and protective functions of
  education. Schools must be free of gender based
  violence and abuse, stigma and discrimination of
  those affected by the pandemic. The protective
  environment also includes care and support for
  children living with HIV/AIDS.

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Monitoring and Evaluation

• Chair USG and UNICEF
• Activities
• Progress Report for Children Affected by HIV/AIDS
  2008
• Status Finalized (included in GPF documentation)
• Estimating numbers of vulnerable children
• Status Developed preliminary vulnerability
  index to be used for estimation models
  Consultant contracted to test this approach for
  five selected countries using DHS data
• Guidance Document for ME of national response
  for OVC
• Status Draft currently under final review
  (included in GPF documentation)
• Identifying measure of vulnerability for children
  
• Status Draft currently under final review (key
  results to be presented on day 2 of GPF)

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M and E Working Group - Way Forward

• Need for
• Better resourcing of M and E within NPAs
• Better co-ordination between those tracking
  national progress and those implementing services
  and support both gvmt and CSO
• Indicate development needs to capture local
  contexts but also ensure global indicators of
  progress
• Ensuring OVC monitoring and targeting is AIDS
  conscious but not AIDS exclusive.

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National Plans of Action

• Chair World Vision International and UNICEF
• Studies of lessons with planning and implementing
  NPAs, and integrating OVC issues into national
  policies desk review and case studies in Malawi,
  Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Uganda, Zambia,
  India and Jamaica
• Findings
• A costed multi-sectoral OVC NPA and political
  support has been critical in accelerating action
  for OVC in many countries
• but process of development slow (3-7 years) and
  implementation at scale limited.
• Integration of vulnerable children into national
  policies and PRSPs has made little difference in
  terms of domestic budget allocations
• Integration into sectoral plans, particularly
  national AIDS strategies has brought clear
  benefits, especially external funds
• Integration/linkages with social protection plans
  may be more effective in future.
• Off budget allocations challenging long-term
  national ownership and need greater alignment
• Strengthening budgetary process and capacities of
  ministries responsible important to ensure
  long-term benefits for children
• Low prevalence countries OVC NPAs face problems
  competing with other policy priorities and
  difficult to generate domestic or external funds

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NPAs way forward

• Case for stand alone NPA or more integrated
  strategy for CABA depends on epidemiological,
  policy and institutional context
• Need more simple and refined guidance which is
  regionally contextualised to review national
  responses to children affected by AIDS
• Countries should identify simple practical
  policies for mitigating impact of AIDS and
  children and explore integration/harmonisation
  with sector plans (health, education, HIV and
  AIDS and social welfare)
• Ensure that domestic budgets prioritise above
  plans for more sustainable response
• Greater role of civil society in monitoring
  policy implementation and financial commitments
• Broader efforts needed to strengthen social
  welfare, social protection and justice (in long
  term)
• All aspects of M E should be strengthened.
• National responses need to give greater attention
  to tackling stigma and discrimination

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Social Protection

• Chair UNICEF DFID
• 3 papers published on
• cash transfers,
• social protection for vulnerable children in a
  context of HIV and AIDS, moving towards a more
  integrated vision
• institutional perspectives for scaling up

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Social protection- way forward

• Need for increase funding for government -led
  scale up of cash transfers as cost-effective and
  evidence-based approach to reach vulnerable
  children
• Strengthen family support services, child
  protection and alternative care and combine with
  broader policy reforms to reduce social
  vulnerability
• Strengthen gvmt ministries responsible for social
  welfare and linkages with civil society for
  accountable and effective programmes
• More analysis needed
• on longitudinal impact of cash transfer and
• linkages with other essential support services
  e.g. ECD, legal support and social work to
  maximise impacts of social transfers
• Evidence of appropriateness of different types of
  transfers in different contexts.

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Food Security and Nutrition

• Chairs WFP and UNICEF
• Ensuring food security and nutrition part of
  comprehensive social protection framework
• Expert consultation held resulting in a consensus
  statement on key knowns on food security
  children and HIV.
• Identified broad priority
• areas

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Way Forward

• Need for working group co-chairs (UNICEF and WFP)
  to agree on an overarching framework and
  priorities
• Co-ordinate and share findings on the impact of
  high food prices on children and families
  affected by AIDs
• Ensure responses to high food prices include
  those affected by HIV from policy to
  implementation level
• Contribute and support the May 2009 Forum on
  global food crisis and HIV and AIDS in Africa.

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Challenges for IATT

• Pace of WG delivery variable - high turn over of
  membership affecting institutional memory and
  leadership
• Need to further integrate recommendations from
  Joint Learning Initiative to strengthen
  evidence base
• More decentralised approach e.g. closer working
  with RIATTs
• Need for stronger linkages with country led
  initiatives and sharing of evidence including
  dissemination of existing recommendations and
  working papers.

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Further information on IATT

• www.unicef.org/aids/index_iatt
• Thanks to all the IATT and RIATTs on children
• and HIV/AIDS