UNAIDS brings together in the AIDS response the efforts and resources of ten UN System organizations:

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)

World Food Programme (WFP)

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

International Labour Organization (ILO)

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

World Health Organization (WHO)

World Bank

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) makes a unique contribution to the Joint UN Programme on AIDS. It has substantial ongoing AIDS programmes and logistics in place to reach refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), other persons of concern to UNHCR as well as the surrounding host communities, which are often located in remote areas.

UNHCR has established an HIV unit with technical experts at headquarters and in the field. AIDS programmes have now expanded from Africa to Asia, the Americas, Middle East and Eastern Europe.

UNHCR has comprehensive AIDS programmes in areas such as assessments, voluntary counselling and testing, prevention of mother-to-child transmission, HIV prevention, development and dissemination of information-education-communication materials and in monitoring and evaluation. UNHCR has developed a competence and expertise in HIV in conflict settings, particularly related to displaced populations. A comprehensive HIV information system has been developed and implemented. Baseline data regarding HIV-related risks have been gathered to make informed decisions for effective HIV interventions, to follow trends over time, and to dispel misperceptions. HIV behavioural and sentinel surveillance surveys have been conducted in various refugee camps in Africa and Asia. Numerous AIDS and refugee publications have been released including a policy on antiretroviral medication for refugees.

United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) recognizes that AIDS is one of the most significant threats to fulfilling the rights of children and women. No region is safe from its spread. AIDS exacerbates poverty, malnutrition, armed conflict, gender inequities and sexual exploitation.

It has reversed decades of progress in human development and threatens achievement of all the global goals of the UN Millennium Summit Declaration. UNICEF is committed to an aggressive response to AIDS not only because of the extraordinary threat it poses to children and women, but also because it is preventable.

To confront the extraordinary challenges of AIDS, UNICEF has established AIDS as a key priority and focusing on four key areas:

• HIV prevention among young people;
• Prevent parent-to-child transmission of HIV;
• Expand protection, care and support for orphans and children affected by AIDS; and
• Expand care and support for children, young people and parents living with HIV.

UNICEF works in partnership with governments, other United Nations agencies, non-governmental organizations and community-based organizations at global, national and community levels.

UNICEF works to: understand the epidemic and assess its impact, particularly on children and young people; evaluate the adequacy of responses and design and support programmes to prevent HIV infection; address the impact of AIDS on children, young people and families; eliminate stigma and empower children, young people, families and communities to cope with the impact of AIDS; and bring about social change.

UNICEF brings to UNAIDS its demonstrated effectiveness in communication and advocacy, and the strategic advantage of its extensive field presence and country programmes of cooperation in 162 countries, areas and territories.

Addressing the rights of especially vulnerable children, young people and families is a particular UNICEF strength, which has, and will continue to assume greater importance in the coming years.

The World Food Programme (WFP) is assisting people affected by AIDS. AIDS worsens malnutrition and reduces the amount of food available to the world's poorest and most vulnerable people.

WFP's food aid helps keep parents alive longer, enables orphans and other children affected by AIDS to stay in school, and permits out-of-school youth to secure viable livelihoods.

World Food Programme (WFP)

WFP has AIDS-related activities in nearly 40 countries worldwide and is present in 21 of the 25 countries most affected by the disease.

Its interventions address HIV prevention (reducing transmission), mitigation (reducing the impact of AIDS) and care (providing direct support for people living with HIV and their families) and include:

Food for life: Nutritious food helps HIV-positive people stay healthier and productive longer, thereby improving their quality of life. Good nutrition is an important component of all community and home-based care programmes.

Food for families: Where the breadwinner is ill, food aid helps keep families united and their children in school. Community and home-based care programmes must focus on the food and nutrition needs of the whole family.

Food for education: School feeding programmes, combined with take-home rations, ensure that the most vulnerable children get an education. This is key to keeping the next generaion HIV-free.

Food for training: Food assistance helps older orphans and children living on the street learn marketable trades, food production, literacy and life skills.

Food for healing: Food rations are an enabler and incentive to patients to complete lengthy tuberculosis treatment.

Food for HIV prevention: Through its partners, WFP promotes HIV prevention and AIDS awareness in all of its programmes and with all of its employees, including long-distance truck drivers who deliver WFP food.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

In partnership with the World Bank and the UNAIDS Secretariat, UNDP provides technical support to assist countries to more effectively integrate AIDS into poverty reduction strategies and implement them. In addition, UNDP supports countries in generating enabling trade, health and intellectual property legislation, for sustainable access to low-cost, quality AIDS medicines.

Governance of AIDS Responses: UNDP supports harmonization and alignment of UN system and donor assistance to national AIDS authorities, and provides implementation support for the Three Ones principles for coordination of national AIDS responses. UNDP builds capacity for the development and implementation of AIDS strategies, and through the Resident Coordinator system, supports the integration of AIDS into UN Country Team common country programming processes, to increase effectiveness of programmes and minimize transaction costs.

Human Rights, Gender and AIDS: UNDP supports countries in creating an enabling human rights environment to protect the rights of people living with HIV, women and vulnerable populations. This includes addressing stigma and discrimination, and gender relations that render women and girls vulnerable to infection, and promoting legislative and other measures to ensure the full enjoyment of human rights. UNDP actively supports the involvement of people living with HIV in the planning, implementation and evaluation of responses.

In addition, UNDP provides support to countries to "make the money work," through technical support and capacity development to accelerate and improve implementation of multilateral funding initiatives such as the World Bank supported Multi-Country AIDS Program for Africa (MAP) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria.

In close collaboration with development partners and national stakeholders, UNDP brings together leaders from government, civil society and the business sector to generate individual and collective commitment and sustainable action in response to the underlying causes of the epidemic.

The Leadership Capacity Development approach aims to develop the capacity of leaders at all levels. By gaining a deeper understanding of the epidemic and how to take action, leaders are equipped to launch new initiatives to address AIDS in their countries.

The Community Capacity Enhancement (CCE) initiative aims to address the underlying causes of the epidemic. CCE creates a space for facilitated discussions on community norms and practices that increase their vulnerability to HIV infection. Through such discussions communities identify their concerns, and find their own solutions.

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

HIV prevention is an institutional priority within programmes supported by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in more than 140 countries.

Applying its experience in reproductive health, the Fund supports a broad spectrum of immediate- and long-term initiatives to prevent the sexual transmission of HIV.

UNFPA focuses on preventing HIV infection among young people. It promotes safer sexual behaviour, empowering young women to refuse unwanted and unsafe sexual relations, and persuading young men to assume more responsibility by protecting themselves and their partners. The Fund supports the provision of 'youth-friendly' reproductive health information, education and services.

Recognizing that most pregnant women are HIV-negative, another priority is preventing infection among pregnant women through the provision of information, counselling and other services, including the provision of commodities for maternal health.

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is entrusted with the exclusive responsibility for coordinating and providing effective leadership for United Nations drug control activities. UNODC addresses all aspects of the drug problem such as:
demand reduction - including prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and averting the negative health and social consequences of drug abuse; supply reduction - including alternative development and law enforcement; and legislative and institutional advisory services to enhance governments' capacity to implement the international drug control conventions.

UNODC assists governments by actively promoting the development of high-quality information systems at national, regional and global levels.

The organization is responsible for the analysis of information provided by Member States on their current drug abuse situation and their counter-measures. The use of psychoactive drugs has facilitated the spread of HIV infection in several ways, the most direct.

International Labour Organization (ILO)

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is the United Nations agency with special responsibility for the world of work.

The ILO's goal is productive and remunerative employment for all, based on the principles of social justice and equality.

The epidemic is a threat to all of the organization's four strategic objectives: fundamental principles and rights at work; employment, income generation and skills; social protection and social dialogue.

Worldwide, at least 26 million workers in their productive prime are infected with HIV. The epidemic is a labour and workplace issue because it threatens livelihoods, productivity, rights at work, and economic growth. It also worsens existing problems of inadequate social protection, gender inequalities and child labour.

AIDS is a development crisis that can only be resolved with a multisectoral response. The ILO's particular contribution to UNAIDS includes:

• a tripartite membership, encouraging the mobilization of governments, employers and workers against HIV;
• direct access to the workplace, with its opportunities for HIV prevention as well as care, support and treatment;
• long-standing experience in framing international standards to protect the rights of workers;
• a global network of field offices and technical cooperation projects; and
• substantial capacity for research, information sharing, and training.

In 2001, the ILO produced the Code of Practice on HIV and the world of work, a blueprint for workplace action that sets out principles for policy development and practical guidelines for programmes of HIV prevention, care and support.

The code has been translated into more than 30 languages so far, including Arabic, Chinese, French, Hindi, Japanese, Kiswahili, Portuguese, Russian, Thai and Urdu.

The ILO is implementing the code through technical cooperation, training and advisory services to governments, employers and workers in all regions. Its accompanying education and training manual contains information, advice on methodology, course outlines and photocopiable learning activities.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization  (UNESCO)

UNESCO, as a founding member and Cosponsor of UNAIDS, contributes to the response to AIDS through strategic and complementary approaches. Its distinctive mix of competencies in education, natural science, social and human sciences, culture and communication and information give it an interdisciplinary, organizational and technical capacity suited to contributing to the achievement of universal access to comprehensive HIV prevention programmes, treatment, care and support.

As education has been identified as key to the response and an area of UNESCO's comparative advantage, much of UNESCO's actions place special emphasis on addressing risk, vulnerability and system-strengthening through this means.

As the lead agency in the UNAIDS division for HIV prevention with young people in educational institutions, UNESCO continues to promote comprehensive, scaled-up education sector responses to AIDS and deepened education sector engagement in national responses to AIDS. Its leadership of EDUCAIDS (the UNAIDS Global Initiative on Education and HIV & AIDS) and its coordination of the UNAIDS Inter-Agency Task Team (IATT) on Education are two mechanisms supporting strengthened strategic partnerships and cooperation among ministries of education, UNAIDS Cosponsors, bilateral agencies and civil society groups at global, regional and country levels to ensure maximum synergy and impact.

UNESCO's response is guided by a number of principles, including:

• Coherence and focus: UNESCO coordinates and focuses its efforts in areas where it has a comparative advantage and can provide added value, in keeping with the UNAIDS division of labour and other recommendations to improve coordination.
• Ownership and partnership: UNESCO supports country-led, multi-stakeholder processes aiming to achieve internationally-agreed goals.
• Effectiveness: To promote efficient and effective responses, UNESCO supports approaches grounded upon available and emerging evidence, approaches that are holistic, rights-based, culturally appropriate, age-specific and scientifically accurate, and seek to meaningfully involve people living with HIV and other key stakeholders, promote gender quality, and build on the strengths of all of UNESCO sectors.
• Flexibility: To meet different needs in different contexts, UNESCO promotes 'knowing your epidemic'.
• Sustained action: AIDS must be recognised as a long-term emergency that will require decades of sustained strategic intervention.

The five core areas of UNESCO's work are:

1. Advocacy and support for evidence-informed policies and practices - to support national education sector engagement in the national response, to address stigma and discrimination, and to support countries in their efforts to integrate AIDS into national development frameworks.
2. Policy and programmatic guidance - for ministries, NGOs, and other partners, formulated on the basis of the stage of the epidemic.
3. Technical support and capacity enhancement - to reinforce synergies with other initiatives and frameworks.
4. Coordination and harmonisation - through the agreed UNAIDS division of labour, with EDUCAIDS, the UNESCO-led UNAIDS Initiative on Education and AIDS, as a guiding framework.
5. Monitoring, assessing and evaluating progress - to determine trends, the coverage, quality and effectiveness of programmes, progress toward agreed goals and commitments, and the impact of AIDS on individuals and systems.
   
   

World Health Organisation (WHO)

As a Cosponsor of UNAIDS, the mandate of the World Health Organization (WHO) is to lead the health sector response to the AIDS epidemic. WHO has intensified its support for Member States' efforts to combat the epidemic within the context of the comprehensive and multisectoral response called for in the Declaration of Commitment of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on AIDS.

The health sector needs to play a central role in promoting and delivering effective prevention approaches, providing treatment and care for people living with HIV, mobilizing resources and providing leadership in the overall response. However, its capacity to perform these roles has been constrained by underdeveloped health systems and the heavy burden of the epidemic.

Renewed political commitment, increased global resources for AIDS, a stronger evidence base on cost-effective interventions, and expanded access to antiretroviral therapy now presents a unique opportunity to strengthen health systems as a whole and mount a stronger overall response.

WHO's AIDS programme is guided by the Global Health Sector Strategy (GHSS) for HIV/AIDS 2003-2007, endorsed by the World Health Assembly in May, 2003.

The strategy describes the core components of a comprehensive health sector response to AIDS, including HIV prevention and health promotion; treatment, opportunistic and sexually transmitted infections; the improvement of health standards and systems and informed policy and strategy development. It also provides a framework for governments and health sector policy-makers to assess and strengthen the role of the health sector within current national responses.

Within the GHSS framework, the WHO HIV/AIDS programme focuses on improving national health strategies.. These include the promotion of safer sex; harm reduction approaches to injecting drug use; HIV testing and counselling; the prevention of mother-to-child transmission; and treatment, care and support.

The normative guidance provided by WHO in these areas is backed by a technical support strategy designed to:

• strengthen the capacity of countries in health sector planning
• improve access to strategic information and normative tools
• strengthen national institutions for improving HIV prevention and care
• strengthen surveillance, monitoring and evaluation capabilities
• assist countries in accessing and absorbing financial and technical resources.

WHO is also supporting the development of regional technical resource networks so that country needs are more closely matched with local technical expertise and institutional capacity. To ensure effective country support, WHO is also working to strengthen the AIDS competence of its regional and country offices.

AIDS is an organization-wide priority for WHO. Its core AIDS programme links closely with other, related programme areas, including: sexual and reproductive health; tuberculosis; blood safety; child and adolescent health; essential drugs and medicines policy; disease surveillance; mental health; vaccine and microbicide development; gender and women's health; health education and substance dependence.

World Bank

The mandate of the World Bank is to alleviate poverty and improve quality of life. The World Bank has placed AIDS at the centre of its development agenda.

AIDS entails an enormous loss of human and economic resources and poses a substantial threat to the economic and social growth of many nations in the developing world. AIDS requires extensive and long-term engagement with countries and partners; it mainly affects adults in their most productive years; it raises complex legal and ethical issues; it reaches all segments of society; and it is growing rapidly.

Since 1986, the World Bank has committed nearly US$2 billion for HIV projects in 64 countries. Most of these resources were provided on highly concessional terms through the International Development Association.

To more effectively address the devastating consequences of AIDS on development, the Bank is undertaking a response to the epidemic with its Multi-country HIV/AIDS Program for Africa and a similar Multi-country program (MAP) for the the Caribbean (involving more than US$1 billion), working in partnership with UNAIDS, donor agencies and governments.

The MAP builds on work already started and focuses on the strong comparative advantages possessed by the partners to rapidly increase the level of action and available resources and to bring to scale the interventions needed for HIV prevention and impact mitigation.

In its policy dialogue with borrowing countries, the Bank stresses that AIDS is a development priority and highlights the need for top-level political commitment, systematic health-sector reforms, human rights protection, and a range of multisectoral reforms to help reduce the factors contributing to HIV spread.

Whenever possible, Bank-assisted activities are advised technically by the other Cosponsors or the UNAIDS Secretariat, and are planned and executed by individual governments, in collaboration with the concerned national and international partners.