Date/Time:     23.07.; 13.00 – 14.00

Location:           HALL A1, AD08

Key speakers: 

• Alexandrina Iovita, Senior Technical Advisor, Human Rights, Community Rights and Gender Department, Global Fund Secretariat
• Nataliya Shumskaya, Head of the Board, AFEW Kyrgyzstan
• Nadiya Semchuk, Program Manager, Alliance for Public Health, Ukraine
• Valeriia Rachynska, Director of Human Rights, Gender and Communities Development Department, 100% Life, Ukraine

Session moderator:  Ganna Dovbakh, Executive Director, Eurasian Harm Reduction Association (EHRA)

About the session

The Global Fund’s Breaking Down Barriers (BDB) Initiative incentives funding for comprehensive programs to remove rights-related barriers, intending to support scale up a set of internationally recognized human rights programs. Long term implementation support is also provided, including for enabling environments to advance comprehensive responses.

Since 2017, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine (the only two countries in EECA) are part of a cohort of 24 countries worldwide that are part of Breaking Down Barriers and are receiving matching funds from the Global Fund to incentivize greater funding in the grants to remove rights-related barriers to health services. The implementation of BDB Initiative was extended in both countries for the Grant Cycle 7 for the period 2023 – 2025. GC8 decisions on catalytic funding are yet to be taken. In 2023 both countries underwent the progress assessment covering the work carried out between the mid-term assessment in 2020 and early 2023.

This session is aimed to:

• Provide a brief overview of the BDB Initiative and its progress so far on the global level
• Share the key results of the recent progress assessment conducted in each county
• Inform about the major successes, key challenges with implementation of BDB activities in countries and lessons learned so far
• Inform about the key ongoing BDB related processes and programs taking place in Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine right now (and\or being planned till the end of GC7)