Speech by UNAIDS Executive Director Dr Peter Piot on the progress made in implementing the resolution 1308 on AIDS and peacekeeping.

I am grateful to have this opportunity to join you on behalf of the Cosponsoring organizations that make up UNAIDS, to introduce the report of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS over the past biennium. In this period, UNAIDS was strengthened by the addition of two new Cosponsors, the World Food Programme and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, taking our numbers to 10, plus the UNAIDS Secretariat. Our efforts take place in a context very different to that of a decade ago, when this distinguished Council established UNAIDS. In the past few years, the world’s response to AIDS has gathered such strength that for the first time ever we have a real opportunity to halt and begin to reverse this devastating epidemic, as called for in Millennium Development Goal 6.

Today it’s fair to say that we are at a very different point from where we were 10 or even 5 years ago in terms of the global response to AIDS. Look where we were 10 years ago, about the time that UNAIDS was created.

I am honoured to have this opportunity to brief you on the challenges that AIDS poses to the ASEAN countries. The global AIDS epidemic is an exceptional crisis. It is not just another infectious disease epidemic or another health problem. It is one of the make-or-break issues of our times, no less than global climate change and mass extreme poverty. There is simply no precedent in modern history for such a massive, globalized and destructive epidemic. And we are still in the early phase of this epidemic – certainly in the ASEAN region.

In the span of just these few years, the Pan-Caribbean Partnership against HIV/AIDS has become the prime platform on AIDS in the Caribbean – this has been possible because PANCAP has been hosted by CARICOM, and so has the great benefit of political backing at the highest levels. PANCAP has made major advances in these years on several fronts, including political and social mobilization, shared planning and development of a regional response, and financial mobilization, with more than $500 million in international funding committed to the Caribbean today. The challenge now is to make the money work – a challenge that I know PANCAP is already engaged with.

On behalf of the UN family, I am deeply honoured to launch the 2005 update on the global AIDS epidemic, a joint report of UNAIDS and WHO, from this great institution of democracy, India’s Parliament.

I was asked to give my reflections on the AIDS epidemic, which I will do. But I will not