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International Air Ticket Contribution – an Opportunity to Support Treatment of HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

NGO Statement, February 2006

As representatives of a number of NGOs working to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, we welcome the support given by 79 countries to explore the implementation of solidarity contributions levied on airplane tickets in the ‘Declaration on Innovative Sources of Financing Development’ (September 2005). This is one of a number of initiatives to create alternative sources of financing for development – including international taxation mechanisms and the International Financing Facility for immunisation.

Since the declaration in September, Chile and France have each adopted airplane ticket contributions which will be formally launched later this year. At the initiative of French President Chirac, the French government is also hosting a High Level meeting on innovative sources of financing development on 28 February-1 March 2006. We hope to see other governments taking the opportunity there to announce the establishment of similar airplane ticket contribution schemes.  

Alternative sources of funding such as this are urgently needed to prevent unnecessary deaths due to hunger and disease, to fight poverty, and to stimulate social and economic development – especially as long as donor governments fail to meet the target of allocating 0.7 percent of their GNI/GNP to overseas development assistance.

However, we strongly believe that funds raised from airplane ticket contribution initiatives – and other new sources of financing for international development – must be additional to existing or future government funding; used for long-term projects such as the treatment of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria; and disbursed through existing funding mechanisms:

• Additionality of funding. Any funding raised from innovative sources of financing for international development should be truly additional in nature. These resources should not reduce existing government budgets for international development – nor be counted as part of government commitments to spend 0.7 percent (or other percentages) of GNI/GDP on overseas development assistance.

• Use of the new resources. Given that funding from innovative sources is likely to be stable, predictable, and long-term, the resources available should be used for support and development of projects that also need long-term, stable and predictable funding. This would include recurrent costs (such as drugs and salaries), the production of global goods, and the development of human capital. In particular, we believe that the proceeds of airline ticket contribution schemes should be allocated to the long-term treatment of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

• Allocation mechanisms. New mechanisms should not be created for the disbursement of the new resources; instead they should be allocated to well-functioning, existing financing mechanisms. We believe that there should be a clear commitment from all countries implementing airline ticket contribution schemes to dedicate the proceeds to long-term treatment of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria through the ‘Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.’

We are very concerned that there is still no concrete plan, nor a sufficient increase in financial support, to meet the commitment to universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment by 2010, which was made during the G8 meeting in Gleneagles in July 2005. Failure to achieve the universal access commitment, and failure to scale up funding to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, will not only result in us falling short of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halting and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, and incidence of tuberculosis and malaria by 2015, but it will also undermine efforts to achieve other MDGs.

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