Empowerment
Empowerment of people living with HIV
Under the theme of Empowerment GNP+ programmes aim to ensure that people living with HIV are involved in all decision-making processes that affect their lives.
People living with HIV have unique expertise to bring to the table – to inform governments where and how programmes can be strengthened and improved. It is therefore important to increase the skills of many more people living with HIV so that they have the confidence to speak out in key decision-making forums.
Despite the early political acceptance of the Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV/AIDS (GIPA) Principle - that in order to have success in dealing with the global AIDS pandemic, people living with HIV need to be involved in all aspects of HIV and AIDS policy and project design and implementation - to date, little more than lip service is paid to it.
Where people living with HIV are involved, their participation is still often tokenistic and usually in project implementation rather than in the designing of policies or programmes. There is little involvement of women and young people living with HIV in policy-making decisions that affect their lives. Even within the Country Coordinating Mechanisms (CCMs) of the Global Fund to Fight HIV and AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM), the voices of people living with HIV may be drowned out by stronger players.
The theme empowerment covers the following programmes: