A three-day technical consultation in New York in September 2011, bringing together 50 experts from 21 countries, from all continents.

Under the title, Developing harmonized indicators for monitoring progress on gender equality dimensions of the HIV and AIDS responses, the meeting was convened by UN Women, in partnership with other UN agencies, as well as the US government, the International Community of Women living with HIV and AIDS (ICW), and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

This expert consultation was designed to advance understanding and agreement on a set of harmonized indicators related to gender and AIDS for use by national HIV programmes, key partners, donors and other major stakeholders. This will support countries to monitor and advance priority programmes in the global response to AIDS.

Participants reviewed a draft of proposed indicators currently used at the international and national level. They went on to categorize them according to their relevance and their ability to track key issues, and to identify any areas where additional indicators were needed.

They also began to develop a dissemination strategy to support the use of the proposed indicators.

Client

UN Women

Process

Robin Gorna, ASAP Director, used her facilitation skills and experience of the issues, to help overcome potential challenges associated with the technical complexity of the subject matter and the need to build agreement.

A key challenge was to achieve consensus among the wide diversity of experts: academics, evaluation specialists, women living with HIV, donors and programme implementers. Participants made excellent progress and succeeded in achieving the main tasks. At the conclusion, there was a high degree of accord, a significant advance on discussions that had preceded the meeting.

ASAP’s Director assisted UN Women in finalising the report, and the steering group is now consolidating results and considering additional input from participants.

By the end of 2011, a total of 88 indicators had been identified, of which half were considered top priority and 18 of which were new additions to the draft compendium circulated in advance of the meeting. The final compendium of indicators is expected to be finalized, and put into use in key countries, by mid-2012.

Report

FINAL Report on Technical Consultation on Gender Equality and HIV Indicator_September 21 – 23