UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY SPECIAL SESSION ON HIV/AIDS

The United Nations General Assembly held its first Special Session (UNGASS) on HIV/AIDS June 25-27. More than 3,000 government officials, activists and business leaders attended. The189-member General Assembly unanimously adopted an agreement to reduce infection rates by 25 percent by 2005, end discrimination by challenging "gender stereotypes and attitudes" and inequalities between men and women worldwide, and provide AIDS education to 90 percent of young people by 2005. By the end of the gathering, African leaders who were often at odds came together to dominate the session, showing a markedly new decision to fight the disease that has decimated their homelands, according to a June 28 New York Times story. Poverty, women's rights and funding issues were also addressed as a part of the solution to combat HIV/AIDS. [http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/28/world/28NATI.html [http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/june01/2001-06-28-aids.htm [http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/print/world/A54800-2001Jun27.html

Women and HIV/AIDS

The UN fund for women (UNIFEM) and other women's advocates urged world leaders at UNGASS to make the fight against sexual inequality central to combating the pandemic. The Boston Globe reported June 27 that women's advocates argued that the disease cannot be stamped out unless women have access to education, employment, and health care, can control their finances, and have protection from rape and sexual abuse, inside and outside of marriage. HIV/AIDS experts said that women now make up 60 percent of new infections, according to a June 26 story by the Associated Press. In sub-Saharan Africa, teen-age girls are five times more likely to be infected than boys. Girls there, who are often denied schooling, "have to be educated," U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) Executive Director Thoraya Obaid said. Agence France Presse and Inter Press Service were among the outlets that reported on women and HIV/AIDS.

[NOTE: For more insight on Thoraya Obaid, view the June 20 New York Times' feature at: link

Support of the Global AIDS Fund

One of the major goals of UNGASS was to galvanize leaders around the world to take action and mobilize the $7 billion to $10 billion Global AIDS Fund that Secretary-General Kofi Annan says is needed to halt and start reversing the epidemic, according to a June 20 Associated Press story. Most recently, large donations of $100 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, roughly $800 million from the United States and in-kind help from a partnership between the Coca-Cola Foundation and several United Nations programs in Africa were added to the fight, as reported on June 20 by The Atlanta Journal and Constitution and on June 19 by the Associated Press.

Annan's call for support of the Global AIDS Fund was reemphasized in a study involving Futures Group International, which concluded that $4.4 billion is needed to treat people with the illness and another $4.8 to prevent new infections by distributing condoms, educating young people about AIDS and reducing mother-to-child transmission, according to a June 22 story by the Associated Press. link

HIV/AIDS Global Crisis

The latest numbers and projections on the AIDS pandemic show the effect on the population worldwide. The state-funded Medical Research Council in South Africa said, "Without treatment, AIDS could kill as many as seven million South Africans by 2010," according to a June 28 article by Reuters. At UNGASS, China's Minister of Health said more than 600,000 people in China are estimated to have the AIDS virus, increasing by 30 percent a year because of an upsurge among intravenous drug users, according to a June 26 Associated Press story. The Washington Post reported on June 19 that the Caribbean AIDS epidemic has remained "shrouded" in denial at home and largely ignored by much of the rest of the world. The Post also noted that poverty, both of individuals and of governments, has played a big role in the spread of HIV in the Caribbean, as it does in the rest of the developing world. [http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-aids-safrica-.html http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/world/A15027-2001Jun18.html]

GLOBAL POPULATION COVERAGE

The New York Times Magazine featured a July 1 story, "Parasites in Prêt-à-Porter are Threatening Japan's Economy," on Japan's struggle with decreasing fertility rates and an aging population. A three-part series, "Japan's Demography Shock," in The Los Angeles Times June 24-26, said Japanese women are now offered an unprecedented array of personal and professional freedoms, but childraising and family life are still bound by traditional constraints. The result of millions of women's individual decisions is a collective baby strike. In The New York Times' feature, the director of Gender Equity Center in Fukushima stressed, "Unless [politicians] create a society where women feel comfortable having children and working, Japan will be destroyed. Child subsidies aren't going to do it. Only equality is." link

According to a United Nations opinion poll of residents in 13 European countries, famine, war and environmental threats that include global warming, pollution, and lack of fresh water are the biggest problems facing the world today, as reported June 22 by Agence France Presse. These problems contribute to the "demographic dimension" that conditions all other aspects of our lives - economic, social, cultural and ethical, said David Warsh in his June 24 column in The Boston Globe.

The Financial Times reported June 19 on an Asian Development Bank (ADB) report warning that rapid population growth coupled with government inaction in Asia are pushing the region to the brink of environmental catastrophe. "Environmental mismanagement affects the poor first. Air pollution affects people living on the street, not people in cars. You can't separate poverty reduction from environmental management," said ADB's senior environment specialist. He argued that failed policies and weak institutions were a large part of the explanation for environmental degradation. link

In the continuing controversy over State Department appointments, the White House indicated in May that it was about to name John M. Klink as assistant secretary of State for population, refugees and migration. The Los Angeles Times reported on June 1 that advocates and abortion rights groups were gearing up to fight the appointment. "We would be in opposition to that nomination," said Sally Ethelston, vice president for communications of Population Action International, a Washington-based advocacy group. "We're not experts in the refugee area. But even though Klink apparently has some experience in that field, it's old and the situation has changed."

OPINIONS AND EDITORIALS

"It's not hard to understand why family planning is such a terrific investment - or why most environmentalists consider world population growth a top-tier issue," wrote John Flicker, president of the National Audubon Society, in a June 16 Orlando Sentinel op ed. He added, "Human population growth is about more than wildlife. It's also about dizzying rates of infant and maternal mortality, rising rates of unemployment, and escalating social and economic instability in the developing world. Experts agree that no single investment in human health, environmental protection, or economic and political stability can ever match investments made in international family planning."

The Boston Globe ran a June 22 op ed by UNFPA Executive Director Thoraya Obaid that stressed the fact "that HIV, in poor and rich countries alike, is linked to discrimination, poverty, and insecurity as well as a culture of silence about the disease and refusal to take preventive action. Yet until a cure is found, prevention is our only hope for stopping the pandemic. Ground zero is a group of African nations."

In a June 20 New York Times op ed, Pascoal Mocumbi, Prime Minister of Mozambique, noted that there would be much discussion about international aid and about drugs and vaccines at UNGASS, "but there is likely to be too little said about what is the primary means by which AIDS is spread in sub-Saharan Africa: risky heterosexual sex. We must recognize the pressures on our children to have sex that is neither safe nor loving. We must provide them with information, communications skills and, yes, condoms." He concluded that slow, painstaking work would be required to bring fundamental change to the way that girls and boys learn to relate to each other and how men treat girls and women, but that our children's lives are worth the effort. Another opinion piece that day by Bob Herbert, titled "A Missing AIDS Lifeline," echoed Mocumbi's message. [http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/20/opinion/20MOCU.html http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/28/opinion/28HERB.html]

The above analysis was written by Ketayoun Darvich-Kodjouri and Kathy Bonk at the Communications Consortium Media Center, 1200 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005, 202/326-8700.

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