SSRC Sponsored Research

April 2008

This paper was prompted in part by discussions at the HIV/AIDS and Fragile States in Australia"s Proximate Region Workshop held at La Trobe University in Melbourne Australia during April 2007. This interdisciplinary workshop provided a stimulating environment for academics, policymakers, and practitioners from the region to debate the salience of the state failure paradigm for understanding the relation between HIV and governance in the South Pacific. The product was a "Research Agenda for HIV/AIDS and State Fragility in the Region!. The conclusions were that: “State fragility does not provide an accurate or useful paradigm for examining the reasons for concern over HIV/AIDS in the Asia-Pacific region.”…”Actions at the level of the community are highly significant in explaining the spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic thus far”…(and)…“There is a rich and varied experience of policymaking and policy implementation with respect to HIV/AIDS across the region.”1