Between exceptionalism and revisionism: Children and global AIDS policies

Abstract

Children affected by AIDS have been neglected within the two policy frameworks most relevant to addressing their situation, namely the exceptional global AIDS response and the revived enthusiasm for aid as an instrument for poverty reduction. Both these fields are the focus of vigorous new debates, which are conducted with scant regard to the issue of children and AIDS. This is unfortunate in that the issue presents a clear case in which social protection programmes are both necessary and - in the right circumstances - efficacious. The current high-level controversies over both AIDS and aid focus on ambitious and parallel goals for overcoming the pandemic and achieving economic growth at the expense of the more modest but achievable goal of providing social protection for children in the shadow of AIDS. The issue of children and HIV/AIDS also deserves special attention as a locus in which public policies need to be both integrated and exceptionalist, and for which aid funds can be well spent. © Institute of Development Studies.