wfn.org | ALL AFRICA NEWS AGENCY BULLETIN No. 45/02 (b)

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

November 18, 2002

AANA Bulletin is an ecumenical initiative to highlight all endeavours and 
experiences of Christians and the people of Africa.  AANA Bulletin is 
published weekly and, together with the French Edition - Bulletin APTA - is 
also available through e-mail.	For editorial and subscription details, 
please contact: 

AANA Bulletin	: Acting Editor - Mitch Odero		
Bulletin APTA: Edition en frangais, ridacteur intirimaire : Sylvie Alemba

All Africa News Agency
P.O. BOX 66878 NAIROBI, KENYA
TEL : (254 2) 442215, 440224 ; FAX : (254 2) 445847/443241
E-mail : aanaapta@insightkenya.com

Chastity Is The Best Defence Against AIDS, Vatican Says

VATICAN (AANA) November 18 - Not surprisingly, the Vatican has once again 
re-affirmed its position that only "chastity" will prevent the spread of 
AIDS, defending its disapproval of sex for procreation only.

The statement was made to reporters before the opening of the November 7-9 
international conference on Catholic Health Care institutions.

Abstaining from sex is the best way of preventing the spread of AIDS, a 
Vatican official in charge of health issues said on November 6.

"Although speaking about chastity these days may sound ridiculous, the 
(Roman Catholic) Church continues to view abstinence as the most efficient 
way of preventing (the spread of) AIDS," Archbishop Javier Lozano Barragan, 
head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Health and Pastoral Care said.

Addressing reporters ahead of a November 7-9 international conference on 
Catholic Health Care institutions, Barragan said three million people had 
died of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome last year.

"The Church is often accused of favouring such deaths by condemning the use 
of condoms," he said. "But the truth is that modern society, which is based 
on pleasure and well-being, has lost touch with the idea of personal 
responsibility and views sex as merely a pleasure rather than an act that 
should lead to procreation".

Barragan had made similar statements two years ago, when he said chastity 
should occur "both inside and outside marriage".

In 1994, Pope John Paul II sent Vatican diplomats to disrupt a world 
population conference in Cairo which had been called to advocate widespread 
birth control.

SOURCE: Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Uproar Over Mandatory AIDS Test For Seminarians

LIMBE, Malawi (AANA) November 18 - The Catholic Church in Malawi has 
announced a new plan to impose a mandatory HIV/AIDS test on its seminarians 
before they are admitted into priesthood. But this has attracted reactions 
of disapproval by interns intending to become priests.

At least 15 deacons from the church's six dioceses were forced to undergo 
HIV tests for them to be admitted as deacons. "We received directives from 
the bishops to undergo the HIV tests or remain unordained," said a deacon 
from the Archdiocese of Blantyre who insisted on anonymity.

He said this is a new development in the history of the Catholic Church 
whose priests observe celibacy. He noted that the seminarians initially 
resisted the directive but later gave in to threats of dismissal by the 
bishops.

The deacon said together with his colleagues, they were referred to St 
Luke's Hospital which is run by the Anglican Church, some 20 kilometres 
from the university town of Zomba to be tested for HIV.

"Fortunately, all of us tested negative. This gave as relief as we were 
forewarned that anyone who tested HIV positive would be sent packing".

Blantyre Archdiocese vocational director, Fr. Peter Phiri confirmed the 
directive but said he was not sure when it would be implemented. "I just 
heard that this was agreed by the bishops but I am not sure when it was 
supposed to be implemented".

But the general secretary of the Episcopal Conference of Malawi, Fr. Robert 
Mwaungulu refused to comment on the issue .

The acting Rector of St Peter's Major Seminary, where the deacons were 
trained, refused to comment on the issue, saying individual dioceses were 
better placed to comment.

However, a high ranking priest in Bantyre said he found it discriminatory 
coming at a time when efforts are being made by different organization to 
give HIV/AIDS a human face and that patients should not be shunned but 
encouraged to face life with optimism.

He said the issue was debatable, unless the bishops have good reasons for 
enforcing it. Forcing anyone to take an HIV test was infringing on their 
rights and against the universal declaration of Human and people's Rights, 
he added.

The Human Rights Commission has expressed displeasure at this development 
.It also condemned the imposition by the church of mandatory HIV tests on 
its seminarians. The chairman, George Kanyama Phiri said in a statement 
that "the church's stand was unconstitutional".

The Commission maintained the Constitution guaranteed every citizen 
personal liberty (Section 18), dignity which is inviolable (Section 19) and 
prohibits discrimination in any form (Section 20).

The MHRC said subjecting priests to mandatory testing amounts to a 
violation of their rights to human dignity and discrimination on grounds of 
their HIV status. Rejecting them to priesthood on that basis would subject 
them to unnecessary ridicule and psychological torture.

"The Catholic Church as an institution which champions human rights should 
be in the forefront in observing and fighting for the rights of their 
faithful and as such they were required to set a good example in this 
regard," charged Kanyama.

It would appear the Catholic Church has made this decision based on the 
misconception that people who test HIV positive are of low moral standing 
in society. To the contrary, people may contract the virus through other 
means other than immoral behaviour.

The move also comes when many organisations are advocating for special 
measures to reduce the trauma caused by rejection of HIV/AIDS patients.

One of them, the National AIDS Commission , NAC has organised a media 
awareness tour on HIV/AIDS projects throughout the country this month.

The commission's advocacy officer, Robert Chizimba said the organisation 
decided to come up with the tour to familiarise the media with the 
commission's programmes and to put a human face to HIV/AIDS messages.

Chizimba said the tour was also part of the activities outlined in 
commemoration of this year's World AIDS Day which falls on December 1 every 
year.

He said the journalists while on the tour will have a chance of visiting 
various non-governmental organisations, community-based organisations and 
government departments which are dealing with HIV/AIDS programmes .

The theme for this year's campaign is Stigma and Discrimination. Commenting 
on the theme, Chizimba said it was the commission's intention to expose all 
forms of stigma and discrimination which people infected and affected by 
HIV/AIDS face.

The National AIDS Commission has been operational for a year and has 
supported a number of non-governmental organisations, community based 
organisations with grants amounting to more than KShs 27 million (about 
KShs 78 to the US dollar) for project implementation.

Reported by by Hamilton Vokhiwa

SPECIAL  REPORT

CITES Sets Strict Conditions For Future Ivory Sales

SANTIAGO/NAIROBI (AANA) November 18 - Building on an earlier consensus 
amongst most African elephant range states, the 160-member Convention on 
International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) 
has agreed here on a rigorous regime for controlling any eventual sales of 
ivory.

CITES has conditionally accepted proposals from Botswana and Namibia that 
they be allowed to make one-off sales of 20 and 10 tonnes of ivory, 
respectively.

The ivory is held in existing legal stocks that have been collected from el 
phants that died of natural causes or as a result of government-regulated 
problem-animal control.

Similar proposals from South Africa and Zimbabwe for 30 and 10 tonnes, 
respectively, will be considered later today. The decision by CITES was be 
formally adopted by the full Plenary before two-week conference ended.

"The African elephant is valued and admired by people all over the world," 
said CITES Secretary-General Willem Wijnstekers.

"But it is significant (the decision) decision embodies an African solution 
to an African problem - the challenge of conserving the continent's wild 
herds of elephants in an age of growing human needs and population".

"While richer countries can often afford to promote conservation through 
strict protection, many poorer nations must do so in ways that benefit 
local communities and bring in much-needed cash for conservation," he said..

"In the African context, a conservation strategy based on sustainable use 
may offer elephants the best possible long-term future.

The key is finding solutions that benefit states that rely on tourism as 
well as those that seek income from elephant products".

The agreement requires any future one-off sales to be supervised through a 
rigorous control system. The sales cannot occur before May 2004 to provide 
time for baseline data to be gathered on population and poaching levels and 
for the CITES Secretariat to verify and register the existing stocks.

The Secretariat must also confirm whether any potential buyers can 
effectively regulate their domestic ivory markets and thus are eligible for 
importing the ivory.

The aim of these controls is to prevent any illegal ivory from entering 
into legal markets and to discourage an upsurge in poaching.

Another protection built into the system is that trade can be suspended if 
the CITES Standing Committee finds either an exporting or an importing 
country to be in non-compliance.

In addition, trade can be stopped if there is any evidence that trade is 
leading to increased poaching in other regions of Africa.

Two monitoring systems that have been  established to track the illegal 
killing of elephants and illegal sales of ivory will be critical to 
ensuring that countries relying on tourism are not harmed by ivory sales 
from countries that also rely on trade.

After banning all ivory sales in 1989, CITES agreed in 1997 to allow 
Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe to make one-time sales from their existing 
legal stocks of raw ivory.

The ivory - which weighed almost 50 tonnes and represented 5,446 tusks - 
was sold to Japan in 1999 and earned some US 5 million. The funds were used 
for elephant conservation activities.

For this year4s CITES conference, these three countries plus South Africa 
and Zambia proposed one-off sales of existing ivory stocks to be followed 
later by annual quotas.

The original proposals were for a first sale of 20 tonnes and an annual 
quota of 4 tonnes for Botswana, 10 tonnes and 2 tonnes respectively for 
Namibia, 30 tonnes and 2 tonnes for South Africa and 10 tonnes and 5 tonnes 
for Zimbabwe. Botswana and Namibia withdrew their requests for annual 
quotas during the meeting.

The (consultations) resulted in amendments to the proposals for resuming 
trade, including an amendment stating that Botswana, Namibia, South Africa 
and Zimbabwe should be able to export their declared stocks of raw ivory 
only after the conditions described above have been met.

Zambia has proposed a one-off sale of 17 tonnes without annual quotas; this 
proposal too will be considered later today.

A proposal from India and Kenya, on the other hand, argued that further 
ivory sales from African elephants should be clearly prohibited as a 
precautionary measure for reducing future threats to the elephant.

During October 29-31, just before the start of the CITES conference, 24 
governments participated in an African elephant range States Dialogue in an 
effort to build an African consensus on ivory.

The Dialogue resulted in amendments to the proposals for resuming trade, 
including an amendment stating that Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and 
Zimbabwe should be able to export their declared stocks of raw ivory only 
after the conditions described above have been met. Kenya expressed its 
reservation on the consensus reached by the other states.

Much of the past decade's debate over ivory has hinged on whether or not 
the sale of ivory from legal government stocks in one part of the continent 
leads to increased poaching in other parts.

Recognizing the need for reliable data on poaching and smuggling, CITES has 
established two long-term monitoring systems.

The site-based system for Monitoring Illegal Killing of Elephants, or MIKE, 
seeks to measure and identify trends in elephant poaching in both Africa 
and Asia.

It also aims to assess the factors driving elephant killings and to 
determine whether such killings are linked to CITES decisions.

Once it is fully operational, MIKE will conduct standardized population 
surveys at least once every two years at 45 sites in Africa and 15 in Asia. 
It is also designed to track the degree of law enforcement
effort at these sites. MIKE is administered by the CITES Secretariat.

The Parties also mandated a monitoring system to track illegal trade in 
elephant products. This led to the development of the Elephant Trade 
Information System (ETIS), which is operated under the auspices of TRAFFIC, 
the wildlife trade monitoring network.

ETIS collects global law enforcement data on elephant product seizures, 
corruption, domestic ivory markets, background economic variables and other 
factors.

The 12th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention Was 
held during November 4 -15. It was attended by some 1,200 participants from 
141 governments as well as numerous observer organizations.

SOURCE: Patricia L. Jacobs,
Associate Information Officer,UNEP