Wind-down on the UN special session on HIV/AIDS
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* The Guardian: It was our big chance to make some real headway in
the crusade against HIV and Aids. But we blew it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story/0,7369,513743,00.html
* The Guardian : US-Islamic alliance hits Aids hopes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story/0,7369,513782,00.html
* The Guardian : UN staff 'could cause Aids epidemic in East Timor'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story/0,7369,513032,00.html
* UN general assembly adopts global plan to fight AIDS
http://www.sabcnews.com/SABCnews/world/other/0,1009,17014,00.html
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The pin that burst the bubble
It was our big chance to make some real headway in the crusade
against HIV and Aids. But we blew it.
Special report:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids
Sarah Boseley
Thursday June 28, 2001
The Guardian
In a half-forgotten, time-warp-trapped building in the world's most
energetic city, three days of discussions have been taking place that
ought to help the world get a grip on a disease that is decimating
populations and wrecking economies. The United Nations in New York
has just wrapped up a special session on HIV/Aids - the first ever
devoted specifically to a health problem.
It should have been a high-level, superlative-invoking three days.
The issues could not be more serious, and the dramatis personae were
top people. There were 26 heads of state here, mostly from African
countries. The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, has been batting
for the US, and Clare Short, the international development secretary,
was here for the UK.
But what a shambles. The state of the building could be a metaphor
for the entire conference. It is hard not to see it as a reflection
of the true feelings of the north - led by the US - towards the prob-
lems afflicting the poor countries of the south.
The UN - that institution which so many of us dreamed of working for
in our naive youths - is in fact a shabby labyrinth that the world
seems to have passed by. You can't make international calls from the
media centre. They have installed computers, but they perch on tall
desks so high that you have to crane your neck to see the screen. The
chairs are too low, apparently made for a bygone generation with
shorter legs and longer bodies. We have to balance the key boards on
our laps.
None of this would matter if the place was afire with enthusiasm for
the work in hand. Far from it. The atmosphere has been dreary, as if
the 3,000-odd ministers, health officials and health workers were
dragged here against their will.
Yet there was so much to play for. This year, as the UN secretary
general, Kofi Annan, said in his opening speech, has been a turning
point in the struggle to get the battle against HIV/Aids going.
Ironically, it is in part thanks to the pharmaceutical companies. The
drug giants misguidedly carried out their threat to take the South
African government to court in a bid to block legislation allowing
the import of cheap drugs. With a quarter of young adults in the
country facing a death sentence from HIV, the spectacle sparked pub-
lic outrage, and the drug companies backed off. There was dancing in
the streets of Pretoria, a rosy glow among the west's liberal-minded,
and the birth of hope in the townships and villages of Africa that
they might get access to the western drugs that can keep people with
HIV/Aids alive.
This was a chance to do great things - to beat back the modern
plague. Annan, who made the crusade against Aids his personal prior-
ity, called for a global fund of $7bn to $10bn, which many hoped
would buy those drugs. But the session, which was meant to put the
seal on the new determination with a declaration of global commit-
ment, has been the pin to burst the bubble. One excellency after an-
other has delivered a sombre speech about the scale of the disaster,
adding nothing to the sum of human knowledge, while behind the scenes
they have bickered about the wording they were supposed to sign up
to. The UK and US have stuck doggedly to their line that prevention -
education in safe sex and condom use - is the way forward, as if the
heartfelt clamour for drugs from the dying had never been made.
Where is the colour, vibrancy and compassion of the massive Aids con-
ference this time last year in Durban? When HIV sufferers in the de-
veloping world first started to campaign publicly for medicines; when
the rest of the world first saw Nkosi Johnson, the young boy with
Aids - now dead - who became a symbol for the disaster; when Judge
Edwin Cameron moved everyone with his critique of a world where HIV-
positive people such as himself could get drugs, but so many of his
fellow South Africans were doomed to an early death?
There's been no sense of what it's really about here at the UN. The
liveliest bit was a press conference by activists who shook symbolic
medicine bottles and shouted: "Medication for every nation. Pills
cost pennies, greed costs lives." And then it was over.
Who knows? If governments move in mysterious ways, then global meet-
ings of government leaders are truly impenetrable. Perhaps something
positive will come out of the UN session. But then again, perhaps
everyone should have stayed at home and got on with fighting the dis-
ease.
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US-Islamic alliance hits Aids hopes
Special report:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids
Sarah Boseley in New York
Thursday June 28, 2001
The Guardian
Islamic governments, with the connivance of the conservative Bush ad-
ministration, succeeded in watering down the final declaration of
commitment to strategies and targets to beat the global Aids pandemic
at the UN yesterday by excluding any reference to gay men.
Human rights groups had been lobbying hard to ensure that those in
high risk groups for HIV/Aids who are often on the margins of society
- gays, prostitutes and intravenous drug users - would be pledged ex-
plicit help in the declaration which set the seal on three days of
talks.
But Islamic governments, with Egypt, the Gulf states, Pakistan and
Malaysia as the most vocal, had fought hard against the original
wording, which said there must be strategies to help "men who have
sex with men".
They based their opposition on cultural and religious values which in
some countries mete out punishments to homosexuals.
The US delegation, conscious of President George Bush's backing from
the moral right, had argued that there was no need to specify which
groups were most vulnerable to the disease.
The result of this unlikely coalition of interests is a declaration
which speaks of activities rather than individuals. Countries should
put programmes in place by 2003 to address activities "such as risky
and unsafe sexual behaviour". Injecting drug use is specified as a
risk and there is a convoluted but discernible reference to prostitu-
tion in the phrase "all types of sexual exploitation of women, girls
and boys, including for commercial reasons".
Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, acknowledged that there had
been problems over the declaration but he said it was important that
they should be discussed.
"The debate has begun and it is not going to go away," he said. The
world now had "a clear battle plan for the war against HIV/Aids . a
blueprint from which the whole of humanity can work to bring a global
response to a global challenge".
Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for Free Choice, said: "The
conservative Catholics and evangelical Christians are seen as the
base of Bush's support and to satisfy them, the administration has
taken positions on reproductive health services and Aids that
threaten the health of men and women."
The declaration sets out detailed strategies to combat the pandemic,
including the care of the 15m Aids orphans, the need for leadership,
prevention strategies and treatment. But those campaigning groups who
had hoped the UN special session would lead to widescale distribution
in poor countries of the antiretroviral drugs that keep people with
HIV alive and well in the west will go home disappointed.
An early draft of the declaration suggested that states should look
at intellectual property rights where it might affect their access to
medicines. Kenya has recently passed laws to enable it to import or
make cheap copies of expensive but essential medicines, after the de-
feat in South Africa of drug companies which wanted to block similar
legislation.
But the US delegation is thought to have been behind a turnaround in
the clause. It now talks of "strengthening pharmaceutical policies
and practices . in order further to promote innovation".
--
UN staff 'could cause Aids epidemic in East Timor'
Special report: AIDS
http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/
Patrick Barkham in Sydney
Wednesday June 27, 2001
The Guardian
The UN was warned yesterday that its staff could set off an Aids epi-
demic in East Timor after it was revealed that a Darwin hospital had
diagnosed 10 aid workers HIV-positive.
Darwin has traditionally been the base for UN teams sent to East
Timor, and the chief minister of Australia's Northern Territory,
Denis Burke, called yesterday for mandatory Aids tests for all UN
workers in East Timor. He said the UN would be "hypocritical" if it
did not act.
"If the UN is serious about tackling Aids globally, they should start
in their own back yard," he said.
Mr Burke said that UN staff visiting Darwin, 300 miles south of East
Timor, accounted for most of the HIV cases recorded there in the past
18 months.
He called on the federal health minister to raise the issue at the UN
Aids summit in New York this week and asked the government to con-
sider restricting visas that allow UN employees into Darwin.
Welfare groups warned that East Timor could become another Cambodia,
where the UN has acknowledged that its peacekeepers contributed to
the spread of the virus in the early 1990s.
There were few incidents of HIV in Cambodia until the arrival of UN
troops in 1992. Now 3.7% of 15 to 49-year-olds are infected, one of
the highest rates in the world, according to UNAid.
Jan Savage, of the Northern Territory's Aids programme, said condoms
are not widely used in East Timor, partly because of its strong
Catholic traditions. It is also medically ill-equipped to deal with
an HIV outbreak because of the dismal state of its infrastructure af-
ter years of conflict.
"The parallels with Cambodia are clearly there," she said. "The last
thing it needs is an HIV epidemic."
--
UN general assembly adopts global plan to fight AIDS
June 28, 2001, 05:48 AM
SABC News:
http://www.sabcnews.com
Delegates to a historic UN conference have adopted a declaration con-
taining a timetable and targets for reversing the AIDS epidemic,
which has killed 22 million people. The declaration was adopted by
acclamation after a three-day special session of the United Nations
General Assembly, the first ever devoted to a public health issue.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan told a news conference earlier that
the document was "a clear battle plan for the war against AIDS,
"which has infected another 36 million people and will likely infect
many more. All in all, I feel more confident today than I did three
days ago that we can defeat this deadly disease," Annan said.
He said what made the special session unique was that it was not lim-
ited to official government delegates but also included AIDS activ-
ists, non governmental organisations (NGOs) and representatives from
the private sector.
"The only way we can ensure that we maintain the momentum and sustain
it is to get that broad participation, at the local level, at the na-
tional level and for all of us to stick with it," he said. "If we
don't, I'm afraid we are going to fail. And it is a fight we cannot
afford to lose."
The conference declaration called for "an urgent, co-ordinated and
sustained response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic," and set out goals, most
of them to be met within four years.
These included making sure that at least 90% of men and women between
the ages of 15 and 24 have access to the information and education to
enable them to protect themselves against infection.
Other targets included establishing "time bound national targets" by
2003 to reduce the prevalence among young men and women in the most
affected countries by 25% by 2005, and by 5 % worldwide by 2010. It
also includes reducing the proportion of HIV infected infants by 20%
by 2005 and by 50 % by 2010, by ensuring that 80% of pregnant women
have access to information about HIV infection. - Sapa-AFP
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