Global Fund Partnership Forum in Dakar. 8-10 December, 2008

DSW participated at the Global Fund Partnership Forum in Dakar, Senegal. The Forum had for title “Listening to the Voices: Stronger and More Effective Partnership for Sustained Impact”. The discussions aimed at identifying ways about how to further improve the way in which the different public and private partners of the Global Fund on the national, regional and global levels work together.  The different side workshops focused on 5 discussion lines, including Partnership and Gender (Women and Girls) and Partnership and Demand, which translated in a set of recommendations from the participants that was presented to the Plenary the last day. These will be taken by the next board meeting in May 2009. Some of these recommendations include the correct implementation of the GF Gender equality strategy, technical assistant for women and girls groups, direct funding to CSOs from the GF, and more GF advocacy towards donors to increase their funding to aid modalities that prove to be transparent, accountable and produce results.

Please click here to view the forum's recommendations.

Doha Conference for Financing for Development. 26-27 November, 2008

The objectives of the DSW/EAAM-delegation to the Civil Society Forum in Doha and the Doha Conference was to trigger discussion on how to reach the Health MDGs through financing for development, in particular through innovative financing mechanisms, within the CSO community as well as to include language on health into the Civil Society Declaration.

The first objective was achieved through the organization of a work shop on "Innovative Financing Mechanisms - How to Bridge the Funding Gap to Achieve the Health MDGs" in cooperation with Action for Global Health (AfGH) during the Civil Society Forum. Speakers in this work shop were Louis da Gama (Global Health Advocates/EAAM) on UNITAID, Susanne Luithlen (GFATM) on Debt 2 Health, the wrap up was provided by Frazer Goodwin (AfGH) and the session was moderated by Katharina Scheffler (DSW/EAAM). A lively discussion about IFMs was initiated by the work shop's 14 participants from Northern and Southern CSO.

The second objective was successfully attained by EAAM through initiating the inclusion of language on "health and education" into the preamble of the Civil Society Final Declaration as well as the inclusion of concrete wording on the Abuja Declaration to urge Governments of developing countries to allocate 0.15% of their budget to health.

More information  can be found here:

Conference Website

ReProductive Aid: Global video conference on RH in the new aid architecture. 29 October, 2008

With the support of WHO and the distinguished, international ReProductive Aid Steering Committee, DSW convened a successful global video conference with sites in Belgium, Ethiopia, Switzerland, Thailand, Uganda and the UK. The event linked some 80 RH professionals, parliamentarians, ministry officials and civil society representatives to share their knowledge, experience and personal insights on how to increase funding for reproductive health in the new aid architecture. 

Excellent keynote speeches were contributed by Dr. Eckhard Deutscher, Chair of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee; Dr. Christoph Benn, Director, Partnership, Communication and Resource Mobilization for the GFATM and Dr. Gill Greer, Director General of IPPF. Regional speakers included representatives of USAID, UNFPA, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the Asian Forum for Parliamentarians in Population and Development, the Uganda Regional Director of Partners for Population and Development, and a Member of the Uganda Parliament.

The video conference was a key part of the global online community called ReProductive Aid, which seeks to engage civil society in a dialogue about how to increase funding for reproductive health services in the new aid archictecture.

To view this 100 minute video conference, please click here.

To join or for more information on ReProductive Aid, click here!