Human Rights and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

With respect to rights-based programming, the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria faces an inherent dilemma: it explicitly espouses human rights-centered approaches to HIV, yet it also claims as a central principle of its work that the programs it funds should result from “country-driven” processes. When the countries that drive “country-driven” processes have policies and laws that undermine human rights, the Global Fund—if true to its human rights commitments—should interrogate its policies and decide whether something other than a laissez-faire strategy is called for. Indeed, the Global Fund has regulations and recommendations, many of which are explicitly geared to enhance the human rights grounding of HIV responses. The objective of this paper is to examine the human rights content and impact of the Global Fund’s work in three areas—grant-making processes, grants, and advocacy, especially to see how thiw institution manages this balancing act.