The National AIDS Commission is pleased to announce the third national assessment of Belize’s progress toward our Commitment to the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS for the period 2008-2009. 

In 2001 The United Nations held a Special Session at its General Assembly in which it signed a declaration for responding to HIV/AIDS throughout the world.  When Belize signed on to the UNGASS HIV/AIDS Declaration, we committed ourselves to working toward the achievement of specific goals that are monitored by twenty five indicators that measure our progress in care and treatment, prevention, knowledge and behavior change.  The National AIDS Commission is charged with monitoring Belize’s performance toward each of these crucial performance indicators.  The U.N. also established a detailed monitoring system comprised of specialized assessment tools and processes to keep track of each member country’s performance.  These include the UNGASS indicators, the National Country Policy Index (NCPI) which looks at each country’s policy environment and how it supports the control of HIV/Stigma and Discrimination and the National AIDS Spending Account (NASA) which identifies the total spending being done in a country’s national response to HIV/AIDS.

In Belize we have assessed our performance toward the UNGASS commitments every two years with the last assessment being done for the 2006-2007 period.  Today we are in the middle of conducting these same assessments once more, this time for the period 2008-2009.  The Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of the NAC Secretariat has been coordinating the multi-tiered evaluation processes to compile our 2010 UNGASS report.  The NAC Secretariat is working with funding partners, USAID and UNAIDS along with local consultants, Martha Carillo (for the NCPI) and Gustavo Perera (for the NASA) to compile the report.  This entire report preparation is being overseen by the UNGASS Working Group comprised of key stakeholders in the national response and members of the NAC Secretariat.  The Committee is led by Ms. Melissa Sobers, the M&E Officer of the NAC Secretariat.  The consultants are meeting with over thirty Community Based Organizations, government departments, Non Government Organizations and funding partners to assess our overall response to HIV/AIDS in Belize.  The results of these assessments will lead our planning, shape our direction and inform our initiatives toward reducing the prevalence of HIV today.

The actual data gathering and preparation of the report is the culmination of strategic planning for the report preparation that started in November 2009.  The data is being gathered since January 2010 and will lead to the preparation of the final report which is scheduled to be completed on the 23 of March for public consumption.