Christians Voice Concerns at U.N. AIDS Conference
Christian groups have been a strong voice at the 2006 United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on HIV/AIDS, urging changes to the international AIDS response.
At the 2006 United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on HIV/AIDS, Christian groups have been a strong voice in highlighting concerns over the vagueness of the current draft political declaration as well as in urging changes to the international AIDS response.
World Vision, an international Christian relief and development organization, was one of the many Christian organizations attending the three-day conference in New York, which closes today. High-level representatives of over 140 U.N. member states and more than 1,000 civil society groups – an unprecedented number – met to report, review, and voice opinions on how to achieve the agreed goals of the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS adopted by the U.N. General Assembly Special Session on AIDS in 2001. The conference was a five-year review of the progress made in the global fight against HIV/AIDS.
World Vision’s representative, Richard Wamimbi, leader of the Africa Children and HIV and AIDS Technical Team, voiced his concern over the lack of a way to measure success or accountability in the current draft political declaration at the U.N. General Assembly Special Session.
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“At this level of global decision-making, such an absence of accountability from a strategy document of this sort is unacceptable,” said Wamimbi in a report released by WV on Thursday.
“If they neglect to include any measures for success in the final political declaration, it will be fundamentally flawed and ultimately will prove toothless.”
According to Wamimbi, the current draft political declaration is missing key dates, times and targets by which success should be measured. In contrast, the 2001 Declaration contained targets that had to be met, which enabled the U.N. Secretary General to recognize that during the past five years, an international community failed to meet the needs of children orphaned by AIDS, said Wamimbi.
In addition to calling for specific targets in the declaration, World Vision is asking that orphans and vulnerable children affected by HIV and AIDS to be high on the agenda at the review.
“A specific and appropriate response is needed to help a generation of children to better support societies that are facing collapse because of the AIDS pandemic,” said Wamimbi.
Based on the recently released 2006 U.N. Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic, some 33.4 million to 46 million people were living with AIDS at the end of 2005, while an estimated 3.2 million to 6.2 million became newly infected, and between 2.2 million and 3.3 million died of AIDS.
The report also noted that treatment alone would prevent some 9 million new HIV infections by the end of 2020, and that treatment combined with prevention would result in some 29 million fewer new HIV infections during the same period.
Church World Service’s (CWS) executive director and chief executive officer, the Rev. John McCullough, spoke on the opening day of the 2006 UNGASS, urging the rich nations of the world to increase production of HIV/AIDS medications for children in developing nations who are living with disease; to increase production of medications to fight AIDS related infections; and to increase sharing of technology, research, and test data, reported CWS on Wednesday.
The Rev. Canon Gideon Byamugisha, the first Anglican priest in Africa to openly disclose his HIV-positive status, will address a United Nations General Assembly high-level plenary meeting today. Byamugisha will be the first person openly living with HIV to address the General Assembly, normally reserved for Member States and U.N. officials.
