‘People may die’ if US cuts foreign aid, says UNAIDS chief

<a class="spreaker-player" href="https://www.spreaker.com/episode/davos-dispatch-people-may-die-if-us-cuts-foreign-aid-says-unaids-chief--63840217" data-resource="episode_id=63840217" data-width="100%" data-height="200px" data-theme="dark" data-playlist="false" data-playlist-continuous="false" data-chapters-image="true" data-episode-image-position="right" data-hide-logo="true" data-hide-likes="false" data-hide-comments="false" data-hide-sharing="false" data-hide-download="false">Listen to "Davos Dispatch: ‘People may die’ if US cuts foreign aid, says UNAIDS chief" on Spreaker.<script async src="https://widget.spreaker.com/widgets.js"></script></a> Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, YouTube, or search “Devex” in your favorite podcast app. Winnie Byanyima has a lot on her plate these days — professionally and personally. In addition to running UNAIDS, where she is executive director, Byanyima has been campaigning for the release of her husband, the prominent Ugandan opposition leader Dr. Kizza Besigye, who is in jail and undergoing trial in a Ugandan military court. Besigye, who faces charges of treachery, could face the death penalty if convicted. He was arrested — or kidnapped, as he and Byanyima alleged — while on a trip to Kenya for the unlawful possession of ammunition and a firearm, charges that Byanyima says are politically motivated. “Since the country opened up to democracy, like other African countries, the government has been struggling to adjust to living with an opposition so there's always a criminalization of opposition leaders,” Byanyima told Devex Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar during a special episode of the This Week in Global Development podcast from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We don't expect the military tribunal … to find him innocent, but we're trying to get him back into a civilian court, which we know will always find him innocent,” she continued, adding that she takes comfort in the support of pro-democracy and human rights organizations. Meanwhile, Byanyima has critical work to do in order to reach her organization’s goal of ending HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths. With U.S. President Donald Trump back in power, those aims face severe political headwinds. In one of his first acts as president, Trump on Monday ordered the United States to withdraw from the World Health Organization, citing the organization’s “mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.” Byanyima sees the move as shortsighted — even though she agrees that WHO needs reform. “We can only ask the United States to reconsider and return because global health is global health,” she said. “Diseases don't respect borders, and without the United States, we are weaker.” Still, Byanyima calls herself a critic of the global development system. She said Trump’s initial moves could come with a silver lining. “What I see now is that this could be a pivotal moment in global development,” she said. “We may be at a point where we'll never see development funding returning to where it was. The rules of development financing must change.” “So in a way, it's a shocking moment. It shocks the system because America puts in a lot of money, definitely all of us will have to adjust to less resources,” she continued. “But it's also a moment to rethink development financing. We need to do something about developing countries being able to raise enough domestic resources themselves.” “I’m scared. … I'm worried that people may die. For us in health, American money is so important to keep people alive.” --— Winnie Byanyima, executive director, UNAIDS And in a world where the spigot of U.S. foreign aid is slowing down, it’ll be more urgent than ever to reform the global financial architecture so that lower-income nations — particularly in Africa — can stand on their own two feet. That means reforming the global corporate tax system, closing tax loopholes, and ending trade barriers, she said. Trump has also ordered a 90-day pause on U.S. foreign assistance funding pending a review of each program, alleging in an executive order that the “foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests.” U.N. agencies such as UNAIDS find themselves in Trump’s crosshairs. “I’m scared,” Byanyima said. “I'm worried that people may die. For us in health, American money is so important to keep people alive.” “We are really watching and crossing our fingers and hoping that America will not make any sudden withdrawal from its support in the global HIV response,” she added. The U.S. is the sole funder behind PEPFAR and also funds one-third of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Byanyima stressed the importance of maintaining U.S. funding for HIV treatments. “If it were to go away suddenly, you're talking of people without their medicines, their daily tablets that keep them alive and healthy,” she said of the funding. “So we hope that America will stay on course, that it will work with [African countries] to grow. We've been developing sustainability roadmaps so that countries, step by step, work their way towards self-financing. But this is going to be a process over several years, and we want to walk with America on that journey.”