Progress in fighting AIDS at risk unless UK steps up, campaigners warn

Hard-won progress against HIV and Aids globally could be undone if the UK withdraws its full support for a flagship UN programme, activists have warned.

UNAIDS, which coordinates worldwide efforts to end Aids as a public health threat by 2030, risks being “sunset” before achieving its goal because of “outrageous” backroom dealings by wealthy donors, campaigners claim.

UNAIDS is in the middle of a major transformation and has shed more than half of its staff since 2025 in response to global aid cuts, mainly from the US. Its board will meet later this month to decide how the organisation should work in the future, including its level of presence in countries worldwide, how big a budget it needs, and how many staff should remain in a central coordinating hub.

A split has emerged between donors like the UK who want a low budget organisation with limited presence on the ground in countries, and civil society groups and governments from countries most affected by HIV. The latter group say UNAIDS is still needed on the ground in the immediate future, to support them as they navigate smaller budgets after US aid withdrawals amid a complicated geopolitical climate.

The UK provided $5.5 million (£4.2m) to UNAIDS in 2026. For 2027 it plans only £1m, The Independent understands. The government has said it will reduce aid spending from 0.5 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI) to 0.3 per cent over the next few years, in order to fund increased defence spending. The Independent has called on the UK to protect spending on efforts to stop the AIDS epidemic.

Asia Russell, executive director of Health GAP, said: “The time to end UNAIDS is once we have defeated this pandemic. Anything else is absurd. And parallel work by powerful donors in backrooms to try to sweep aside legitimate concerns regarding transitioning UNAIDS is outrageous.”

In 2025, around 41 million people globally were living with HIV, and 1.2 million people newly acquired the virus. Around 570,000 people died from Aids-related illnesses.It comes as funding for HIV responses in low- and middle-income countries fell by $2.1 billion (£1.6bn) last year after Donald Trump’s administration made substantial cuts to global health funding.

Donor funds decreased by a quarter compared to the previous year, recent reports from KFF and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS show. It marks the lowest funding level since 2007, with total disbursements dropping to from $8.3 billion in 2024 to $6.2bn in 2025.

Mike Podmore, CEO of UK advocacy network STOPAIDS, said: “The UK’s support is fundamental to the future of UNAIDS and the direction of the global HIV response.

“If donor decisions are driven by aid cuts rather than by listening to and standing side by side with the countries and communities most affected, we risk UNAIDS closing prematurely and hard-won progress being undone.

“We urge the UK to honour its legacy as an HIV leader: provide ongoing funding to UNAIDS; support it to keep a country presence defending human rights and gender equality; and protect community leadership in its governance.”

Initial proposals by UN secretary general António Guterres to sunset UNAIDS by the end of 2026 as part of wider UN reforms were scrapped, but a working group has been meeting for months to establish a transition plan for the organisation.

Its final document proposes a smaller UNAIDS central hub that would focus on advocacy, data and governance, with some work currently carried out by UNAIDS instead done by other organisations such as the World Health Organisation.

The group sets out three proposals for annual ongoing budgets of between $35m and $90m. The current core budget is $63m. However, during talks, some donors suggested a lower annual budget of $25m to $35m.

The open letter to the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board (PCB), signed by more than 300 civil society groups, says the global HIV response is “at a critical moment”, and that the board’s decisions “will have a profound impact on our lives and on our shared goal of ending Aids as a public health threat by 2030”.

It adds: “We are concerned that discussions taking place outside or in parallel to the formal process could lead to PCB decisions that amount to a gradual sunsetting of UNAIDS without that outcome ever being agreed.”

Some options under consideration, including a $30m budget, 34-person staff and 12-month transition timeline are “obviously inadequate”, the letter says. It also urges the PCB to protect UNAIDS’ presence in countries around the world, and “resist unrealistic thinking” about other parts of the UN taking on work, saying they are unlikely to prioritise HIV when “faced with their own shrinking budgets and political threats”.

A UNAIDS spokeswoman said: “For more than 40 years, progress against Aids has come when countries stood together and acted in solidarity with the people and communities most affected by HIV. That principle matters just as much today.”

She said the working group’s conclusion was clear that “it is much too soon to contemplate sunsetting UNAIDS [...] the next steps should be shaped by what countries and communities say they need, guided by local realities and readiness, and focused on protecting hard-won gains for people living with and affected by HIV.”

A spokesperson for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said: "The UK priority remains securing an effective, efficient, and sustainable future for UNAIDS, and that is why we have committed a further £1m on top of our existing £4m provision to support their reform and transition efforts."

This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project