The Institutionalization of Global AIDS and the Creation of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)

This chapter focuses on the creation of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), and how this new formation set about institutionalizing a global AIDS perspective. The chapter considers the main motivations behind this creation, which included the need to create a coherent and shared understanding of HIV, together with a coordinated policy framework to bring together different technical and political capacities for coherent policy intervention in multiple country contexts. The chapter argues that this process of creating a shared understanding of expected outcomes led to a shared understanding of the disease laying the foundations for the politics of Global AIDS.