It's the Company you Keep

US blocking deal on fighting Aids

02 June 2006
Mail and Guardian

The Bush administration, heavily influence by the Christian right, is blocking key proposals for a new United Nations package to combat HIV/Aids worldwide over the next five years because of its opposition to the distribution of condoms and needle exchanges and references to prostitutes, drug addicts and homosexuals.

The United States is being supported by many Muslim countries, including Egypt, and various conservative African and Latin American nations. "There are a lot of unholy alliances all over the place," said a European official attending UN talks in New York on Thursday night.

Fraught negotiations were continuing to try to salvage as much of the package as possible. More than 140 nations are attending the UN summit in New York which began on Wednesday. The meeting is intended to update a 2001 declaration that provided the momentum for a worldwide campaign against HIV/Aids. A new declaration is due to be agreed on Friday.

Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, told the summit: "The world has been unconscionably slow in meeting one of the most vital aspects of the struggle: measures to fight the spread of Aids among women and girls. These shortcomings are deadly."

A report published on Tuesday by the agency UNAIDS says new figures suggest the infection rate is slowing down globally, but new infections are continuing to increase in certain regions and countries.

The report adds that an estimated 38,6-million people are living with the Aids virus, HIV; 4,1-million were newly infected last year; 2,8-million died of Aids last year; and treatment with medicines is available to less than half of those infected with the virus.

Of those infected worldwide, almost half -- about 17 million -- are women, and three-quarters of those are in Africa.

The British government, which has sided with Washington so often over the past decade, is in the progressive bloc at the summit, along with Canada and other European countries, and is diametrically opposed to Washington over its approach to HIV/Aids.

Although the US is the world's highest spender in combating the virus, much of the money goes towards sex abstinence campaigns rather than the distribution of condoms or needle-exchange programmes.

Hilary Benn, Britain's International Development Secretary, who flew to New York last night and will address the UN General Assembly on Friday, distanced himself from the US approach.

He said: "We have to take action on the evidence of what works, on what saves people's lives, and not on ideology. That means making condoms available and reducing harm to people at risk: injecting drug-users, sex workers and men having sex with men."

It's not humane to not help people when there is a process that WORKS in reducing the spread of a disease, nor does it make sense. That Yankee practicality and ingenuity can't be used when you only see 1 RIGHT answer because you are blinded by personal views. The US is putting conditions and regulations on these deals that they know won't be accepted by the international community on their own, so they hope that in desparation to get anything done, the activists will take these deals no matter how bad they are.

Talk about negociating in bad faith... is it a wonder why the rest of the world is losing their respect for us? Even better, Britain won't support us but the ultra-conservative Muslim groups will.... but I thought they hated us for our values?