UNITAID: laboratory for innovative financing for development

When in September 2000 the heads of States and governments of the world met in New York for the Millennium Assembly, expectations for globalization to foster robust economic growth in OECD countries, to allow for speedy catching up of emerging countries (especially in Asia), to boost international trade, abate global conflicts and support democracy, were at their highest. Against this backdrop, the fact that a sizeable part of mankind could miss the bandwagon, especially in Africa, the continent most affected by poverty and its attendant woes disease, ignorance, war seemed increasingly anachronistic, something to correct without delay, for the sake of human rights as well as collective security. The persistence of hotspots of instability on the margins of globalization indeed posed new risks, especially in the fields of migrations or mass population movements.

It is in this very particular context that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were adopted. Sectoral goals water, health, education, environment, etc. were underpinned by one single global vision: to help these fragile countries board the train of globalization, to allow them within the next 15 years, i.e. by 2015, to take the quantum leap that would allow them to get their share of global trade and strengthen their basic social infrastructure.

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