ABSTRACT
AIDS is named a global disease. It has become one of the indicators for showing that we are living in a globalised world with global risks. Moreover, the consideration of HIV/AIDS as a global problem has resulted in the creation of yet another globalising process: an international policy framework to understand HIV/AIDS. Thus, a global framework has emerged to solve a global problem. In most HIV/AIDS-related international policy documents the importance of civil society is emphasised and the role of nongovernmental organisations within it is seen as central for multi-sectoral interventions to adequately deal with the disease (UNAIDS 2002b, 2004a, 2004c, 2005a, 2006; GHPWG 2003). It is within this framework, in the international governance of the disease, that NGOs are taking part and contributing to the fight against the disease. It is also within this international process that their agency is acknowledged. For example the 2004 annual UNAIDS report argues that ‘Civil society organisations often have innovative approaches to the epidemic, and can channel funds to communities, augment state service delivery, and monitor national government policies. At the community level, governments’ administrative procedures must be flexible enough to include NGOs’ (UNAIDS 2004c: 157-8). In this statement the idea of NGO agency follows the available literature on NGOs and on their role in advocacy, service delivery and being flexible. It is in this context that NGOs have a certain agency attributed to them.
