December 2018
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund) is the most important donor agency supporting projects and programmes targeting people who use and inject drugs globally. Between 2002 and 2014 the Global Fund supported 151 grants in 58 countries and one regional grant, all of which included activities to support people who inject drugs, with a total investment of USD $620 million. Despite these significant investments, important financial gaps remain in the global response to HIV among people who inject drugs.
The Global Fund considers that the Country Coordinating Mechanisms (CCMs) represent “the cornerstone of the Global Fund architecture” and that CCMs are “central to the Global Fund’s commitment to local ownership and are a ground-breaking, innovative mechanism towards stakeholder collaboration and participatory decision-making.” Despite this, people who use and inject drugs are rarely involved in official roles in Global Fund mechanisms, including CCMs, and are rarely meaningfully involved in discussions that impact their lives and livelihoods, or even considered meaningfully by other stakeholders who design those responses.
This guide was therefore designed to strengthen the capacity of people who use and inject drugs – who universally face criminalisation, extreme marginalisation and stigma and discrimination – in order to effectively and safely engage in the development, implementation and oversight of Global Fund grants and related processes at the national and regional levels, especially through CCMs.
The Guide is the final output of a systematic review and a multi-country qualitative study with Mr. Pascal Tanguay as the Principal Investigator and Mr. Bikas Gurung as Co-investigator, on behalf of the Asian Network of People who Use Drugs (ANPUD) under a joint consortium project of ANPUD and the International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD). Ms. Judy Chang and Mr. Mick Matthews at INPUD, both provided guidance and invaluable inputs that contributed to framing the development of the Guide, under supervision of Anand Chabungbam (ANPUD Regional Coordinator).
ANPUD and INPUD are grateful to the Global Fund for the financial support that enabled the development of the Guide