In September, after years of pushing by AIDS-Free World and women’s groups from around the world, UN member states passed a resolution to move swiftly to create a new UN agency for women. AIDS-Free World is demanding that the UN rely on the innovation, wisdom and energy of women’s civil society organizations to inform every aspect of the development of the new agency.

We understand the UN Secretariat is considering UNAIDS’ governance structure as a possible model for the new women’s agency.  Undeniably, the UN has a lot to learn from the successes of the AIDS movement in demanding that the international community create institutions that respond to their needs and rely on their expertise.  If not for the global community of AIDS activists we wouldn’t have the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria, nor would we have the participation of people with AIDS on the governing body of UNAIDS. 
But is the UNAIDS governance structure the right model for the new women’s agency? Let’s take a closer look.

It’s hard to pick up a newspaper these days and not come across an article about the global food crisis — soaring food prices, riots over rice and bread, and looming famines are dominating the headlines worldwide.

It took a street billboard, not the busy traffic or music blaring from the bars, to shake  me out of my post-flight daze. We were driving into Kampala from the airport, and there it was – a massive ad about HIV/AIDS. After reports last year that billboards promoting A, B and C (abstinence, being faithful and condoms) in Uganda had been replaced by abstinence-only ones, I was on the look-out for street ads. But what I saw, as we rounded the city traffic circle, was entirely unexpected. On the billboard was a middle-aged African man, professionally dressed and smiling. The line below read:

Would you let this man be with your teenage daughter?
So why are you with his?”

In mid-January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, representatives of the World Food Program stopped the meeting in its tracks with the revelation that for the first time in WFP history it was hard to procure essential food supplies. A range of factors, including soaring food prices stoked by the international community threatens, yet again, to add to the hunger and poverty of the developing world.