ABSTRACT
This book presents different perspectives of the global response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the role of international institutions involved in this response. It focuses on the functions and governance structures of relevant global institutions and specifically analyzes the impact of decisions and actions of those institutions on the capacity of countries, communities, and individuals to respond to threats and challenges of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. Looking at the HIV/AIDS epidemic as an international crisis, the analysis of the global response highlights the power relationships and tensions between the global South and the global North. The former is made up of the developing regions, mostly poor countries, where the epidemic is concentrated but with limited resources to deal with the problem, in contrast to the developed and rich industrialized countries that have the resources and knowledge to ensure an effective global response but are less affected by HIV/AIDS. The book is organized to reflect the “exceptionality” of HIV/AIDS
as a global crisis and to trace the “internationalization” of the response to this crisis. Key issues and actors involved in the global response to the epidemic are highlighted and analyzed in the various chapters, starting with the evolution of HIV/AIDS as a global epidemic and ending with a review of unresolved and emerging issues and challenges of critical importance to the response. In between, the individual chapters cover early efforts at global coordination of the response and at putting and keeping HIV/AIDS on the international agenda; the establishment of the special inter-agency institutional partnership established within the UN system to coordinate the global response; the challenges presented by the impact of the epidemic on human resource capacity and development prospect; the threat posed by HIV/AIDS to human rights and national security; the complexity of the financing of the global response; and concerns about imbalances in the governance structures of global institutions and the adverse effects on the response.
