The UN agency that fights HIV plans to slash its workforce by more than half and move many posts to cheaper locations as a result of drastic funding cuts from long-time donors in the United States, Asia and Europe, the agency and staffers have said.
UNAIDS said “the overall global AIDS response is facing a severe shock and many of the gains made in the past few decades are at risk of being reversed.”
It said the restructuring follows an independent panel’s recommendations calling for “downsizing” its secretariat in Geneva while continuing to “prioritise the most essential functions.”
It said it would maintain its presence in 36 countries.
Drastic US cuts in assistance under the Trump administration, part of wider cuts for global health, strike perhaps the biggest blow ever to the world’s efforts to fight HIV.
UNAIDS had previously warned that unless support to its HIV efforts are restored soon, more than six million people could die in the next four years and an additional 2,000 people per day could become infected with the virus that causes AIDS.
Employees were told at an internal town hall on Tuesday that staff will be reduced to around 280-300 from about 600 currently, participants said.
UNAIDS officials were considering plans to move many posts to lower-cost locations where it already has offices: in Bonn, Germany; Nairobi, Kenya; or Johannesburg, South Africa, the country with the world’s highest number of AIDS cases, agency spokesperson Charlotte Sector said.
UNAIDS was created in 1996, largely to address shortcomings in global HIV policy by another UN health agency, the World Health Organisation (WHO), which continues to partially fund it.
The United States, under the second Trump administration, has sharply reduced or paused international funding and support for many UN-related agencies.
In an in February in response to the US cuts, UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said HIV infections could jump more than six times by 2029 if US support of the biggest AIDS programme is dropped.
She warned that more resistant strains of the disease could emerge.
Byanyima acknowledged some valid criticism regarding how HIV aid has been delivered and called it “an opportunity to rethink and develop more efficient ways of delivering life-saving support.”
According to its website, support from the United States contributed more than 40% of the UNAIDS core program and non-core activities that totalled about $214 million (€188 million) in 2023, the most recent year listed.
Other top contributors included the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.
ADVEReadNOWISEMENTIn April, the World Food Programme (WFP) and other UN agencies said they would have to slash jobs because of funding cuts, mainly from the United States, warning the reductions would severely affect aid programmes worldwide.
Other bodies like UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, and OCHA, the humanitarian agency, also announced cuts that would impact around 20% of staff and overall budgets.
The cuts to the UN agencies underscore the impact of President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US back from its position as the world’s single largest aid donor.