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Amb.
RICHARD HOLBROOKE:
BUSINESS FIGHTING
AIDS
(MaximsNews.com,
UN)
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UNITED NATIONS - / www.MaximsNews.com/
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7 July 2006 -- Amb.
Richard Holbrook (former
US ambassador to the
UN)
told correspondents at a
Headquarters press
conference that while
important strides had
been made in getting
business to acknowledge
its role in the fight
against HIV/AIDS, it was
only a scratch in the
surface, and he
presented the first ever
baseline report on best
practices in business
response to HIV/AIDS at
the United Nations
High-Level Meeting on
AIDS.
Introducing
the report, entitled
“The State of Business
and HIV/AIDS (2006)”,
Mr. Holbrooke, former
United States Ambassador
and Chief Executive
Officer (CEO) and
President of the Global
Business Coalition (GBC)
on HIV/AIDS, said the
Coalition had been
organized as a
non-governmental
organization to get
businesses to do their
part against HIV/AIDS.
Secretary-General
Kofi Annan had asked him
to take over the GBC in
2001, when the
organization had only 17
members and he had
become a private
citizen. Today,
the Coalition had over
215 members. The
GBC moved its annual
dinner around the world
and gave a series of
awards to companies,
including most recently
to L’Oreal, the
National Basketball
Association (NBA) and
Merck. Booz Allen
Hamilton had played the
lead in the report being
launched today.
Outlining
three major
developments, he noted
that Trevor Nielson was
stepping down today as
GBC’s Executive
Director and would be
succeeded by John
Tedstrom, the President
and Founder of
Transatlantic Partners
against AIDS (TPAA).
The
GBC and the TPAA would
then merge, which meant
that the GBC would
almost double in size,
with offices in Moscow
and Kyiv, London, Paris,
Johannesburg, Nairobi,
Beijing and Geneva.
That was particularly
significant, as Russia
and Ukraine were the two
countries where HIV/AIDS
was spreading at the
highest rate.
He
added that last year,
the GBC had been
designated as the
official organizing
non-governmental
organization for the
global business
community for the Global
Fund on AIDS,
Tuberculosis, and
Malaria. In that
capacity, the GBC was
working with the Global
Fund in Geneva to
mobilize the private
sector.
While
the GBC had only focused
on AIDS, at the
suggestion of the Global
Fund it would now assume
responsibility for
mobilizing the business
sector on malaria and
TB, as well. The
connection between AIDS
and TB was self-evident.
Malaria was a separate
disease, but one that
should have been
conquered a long time
ago.
Booz
Allen, one of the
GBC’s most active
members, had created the
publication, which went
together with the
reports that Joint
United Nations Programme
on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)
Director Peter Piot had
issued today, he said.
The
report was an attempt to
start a more intense and
analytical discussion
about how companies were
doing. While many
companies understood
their responsibilities,
many did not. He
was not boasting about
the GBC’s achievement.
Two hundred fifteen
companies was a lot, but
it was only a fraction.
The Coalition had no
Japanese members, and no
one had figured out how
to address the issue of
small and medium-sized
enterprises. The
report was an attempt to
start focusing on that
issue.
Presenting
the report’s key
findings, Peter Parry,
Vice-President of Booz,
Hamilton Allen said the
report was the first
attempt to provide a
foundation for which
business could consider
the pace, range and
content of its response
to the pandemic.
The
baseline report drew
together the actions and
programmes of 75
companies, who were
publicly committed to
the fight against
HIV/AIDS. The
study was designed using
GBC’s Best Practice
AIDS Standard (BPAS), a
10-component
self-assessment tool
enabling companies to
confidentially monitor
their business AIDS
response and examine
their progress.
The
baseline captured
responses in 10 areas,
and looked at five
actions within each of
those areas, he said.
The report showed that
business had been
enormously successful in
two areas, including in
the area of community
and government
partnerships, where over
90 per cent of the
companies were active in
those kinds of
relationships and 56 per
cent of companies
co-investing in
public-private
partnership activities.
The
second strongest area,
he said, was that of
prevention, education
and behavioural change,
where over 80 per cent
of the companies in the
survey had workplace
information in place, of
which 55 per cent were
extending it beyond
workplace boundaries.
Other areas were proving
more difficult.
Companies
found it more
problematic when looking
to engage business
associates and supply
chains in the fight
against HIV/AIDS.
That area was the one
with the lowest score in
the exercise. For
example, only 9 per cent
of companies had been
able to successfully
engage their supply
chain contractually in
supporting their HIV
programmes.
The
response also varied
widely around different
industry groups, he
said. Sectors such
as food and beverage,
metals and mining and
energy stood out.
Those kinds of companies
were active in all of
the 10 areas of the GBC
report. The
sectors where there had
been less pickup by
industry were in such
areas as transportation
and automotive, largely
because those industries
had not faced the same
kind of immediate
challenge. It took
about three years for a
business to get fully
into action around its
own response to the
pandemic.
After
that, a company was
generally active in 20
of the 50 specific
activities that the BPAS
looked at. That
grew to about 30 action
areas, or 50 per cent
more after five years.
Companies were
increasingly strategic
in the way they
considered their
partnerships and
programmes.
On
the issue of prevention
and treatment
programmes, he noted
that 82 per cent of
companies were providing
workplace information on
HIV/AIDS, or to around
11 million workers.
But only 41 per cent of
those companies were
conducting surveys and
assessments to make sure
that the programmes in
place were hitting the
targets they were aiming
at.
In
the area of treatment,
84 per cent of the
companies in the
exercise ensured that
their staff had access
to treatment. At
the current stage,
however, only 34 per
cent of companies
surveyed fully
subsidized that
treatment. Some 94
per cent of HIV-infected
employees were able to
continue normal working
life after receiving
treatment.
He
said there were many
ways to look at the
baseline, including
differences of approach
between large and small
companies. The
smaller companies tended
to focus on products,
service donations,
advocacy and
philanthropy.
Larger enterprises
focused the bulk of
their attention on
workplace programmes and
activities.
The
other aspect of the
discussion was around
leadership and advocacy
of business, he said.
Some 55 per cent of the
companies that
participated in the
survey secured their
CEOs to support
communications with
employees and externally
on the company’s
position relative to
HIV/AIDS.
Advocacy
was essential in
reducing stigma and
encouraging employees to
come forward for testing
and treatment,
particularly in
high-prevalence areas.
Around 41 per cent of
companies promoted
recognition of their CEO
as a leader in that
area.
The
leadership role was
about creating the best
possible conditions for
business to succeed in,
he said. The
baseline report
underlined that the
fight against HIV/AIDS
was now a real strategic
concern for business and
had moved on from simply
being a corporate
responsibility.
While
still a scratch in the
surface, that scratch
was getting deeper,
UNAIDS Executive
Director Peter Piot
said. The GBC was
UNAIDS’ main partner
in terms of working with
the private sector.
It was not only an issue
of enrolling companies
in the Coalition.
What they were doing in
the field mattered most.
He
welcomed the report,
which, until now, was
the ultimate report on
the business response to
AIDS. L’Oreal, a
winner of the GBC award
last week, for example,
was training hundreds of
thousands of hair
dressers to add a
30-minute presentation
on AIDS when promoting
their products.
Other examples included
the NBA, which was
reaching young people
through sport.
The
reason why he loved the
L’Oreal project, Mr.
Holbrooke added, was
that it bypassed all the
bureaucratic, political
and faith-based
objections to the issue.
It was a creative and
organized programme.
Responding
to a question, Mr. Piot
noted that the General
Assembly, in its 2001
special session, had set
a target of $7 billion
to $10 billion to be
spent in 2005.
While there had been
enormous scepticism at
that time, this year
they were at $8.3
billion. That
money came from various
sources, including
Governments, donors,
private money and the
Global Fund.
The
original General
Assembly special session
in 2001 had been his
proposal in 2000 when he
served as United States
Ambassador to the United
Nations, Mr. Holbrooke
said. With the
election having taken
place and the outcome in
doubt, he had wanted to
lock in the next
administration, if power
was going to shift to
the Republicans.
In
the last two months of
his ambassadorship,
therefore, he had put in
a General Assembly
motion to create a
special session on AIDS
for June 2001, forcing
the new United States
Administration to
confront the issue
early. In June
2001, Secretary of State
Powell had given one of
the best speeches of his
term.
President
Bush then followed up
with his PETFAR
proposals, in his 2003
State of the Union
address. That was,
in his view, the
outstanding foreign
policy achievement of
the current
administration and a
bipartisan issue that
was strongly supported
by both parties.
This was the five-year
follow-up.
To
him, World AIDS Day was
a great celebration of
empty rhetoric, he
added. While he
would not oppose World
AIDS Day, what happened
on that day did not have
much to do with the
fight against AIDS.
What L’Oreal, the NBA
and Peter Piot were
doing on the other 364
days really mattered.
But that was a personal
bias. He did not
like empty symbolism.
He wanted to see action,
such as L’Oreal’s
project to get
hairdressers to talk
about AIDS.
Asked
to comment on the list
of companies in the GBC,
Mr. Holbrooke said there
were a handful of
Russian, Ukrainian and
Latin American
companies. There
were two reasons for
that. In the case
of the former Soviet
Union, the GBC had left
it to the TPAA, which
had some very important
members. Latin
America was the
Coalition’s biggest
shortfall. The GBC
had at least several
Brazilian members,
including Volkswagen of
Brazil, which had been
one of the biggest
leaders in the fight.
Asked
whether it was a
cultural issue, Mr.
Holbrooke said that
Latin America was the
fault of the GBC.
As for Japan, he was not
going to make a long
statement about Japanese
culture, but he would
love to come back with
the first Japanese
member. Japan had
its own organization,
called Friends of the
Global Fund. But
as Japan had such a
small HIV/AIDS problem,
it did not see it as a
priority.
Regarding
the shortage of
transport companies, he
noted that most truckers
were independent.
The overwhelming bulk of
people in the
non-agriculture sector
worked in organizations
with less than 50
people. It was
really a matter of small
and very small
enterprises, and perhaps
self-employed.
Responding
to several questions on
the annual membership
fees, Mr. Holbrooke said
the Coalition was
supported by its
members, and not by
foundations, Governments
or the United Nations.
It was dependent,
therefore, on
contributions.
Not
all 215 members paid the
$25,000 fee. In
the case of Booz Allen,
it was a multiple of the
$25,000 fee. Their
work had made a
tremendous impact.
The GBC did not ask a
small company in Kenya
or India, for example,
to pay $25,000.
There was a discount for
poor countries.
Asked
how a company could
benefit from joining the
Coalition, he said some
companies joined to show
support, just because
they wanted to be on
board. In that
way, their membership
was like a contribution.
Other companies were
deeply involved and
needed the Coalition’s
help. Others
joined, but got pulled
in bit by bit.
Sometimes companies were
shamed into joining,
others wanted to do
something. The
question had 10
different types of
answers.
The
Coalition was trying to
get companies to realize
that AIDS was their
business.
L’Oreal was brilliant
in the way in which it
had taken their core
competency and applied
it to the problem.
Very few companies had
been so creative.
Participation
in the GBC accelerated
companies’ own ability
to move forward, Mr.
Parry added.
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