wfn.org | Despite reservations, faith-based activists hail U.N. declaration on

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ecunet.org>]

Note #6733 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

AIDS
29-June-2001
01220

Despite reservations, faith-based activists hail U.N. declaration on AIDS

'Compromise' document still seen as positive 'step in the process'

by Chris Herlinger
Ecumenical News International

NEW YORK CITY - Faith-based AIDS activists say an international declaration
approved this week by the United Nations General Assembly supports them in
their work, though they are not happy with the document's omission of groups
at risk for contracting the disease.

	"It was a historic moment, where the issue was given due attention by the
international community," Manoj Kurian, a Malaysian doctor and the health
and healing program executive of the World Council of Churches (WCC), told
ENI at the end of a UN special session on AIDS held here from June 25-27.
"It has to be seen as a step in the process."

	The declaration was the first-ever statement of agreement by UN member
states that sets specific targets to fight AIDS and to reduce the number of
new people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

	Though the declaration is not binding on UN members, it sets goals for
specific outcomes, such as a reduction of AIDS infection rates by 25 per
cent and the availability of AIDS educational programs in all nations within
four years.

	But, to the disappointment of AIDS activists attending the New York
meeting, the document also reflects the conservatism of a number of UN
members who opposed more specific language on those at particular risk of
AIDS and HIV transmission: gay men, sex workers and their clients and
intravenous drug users and their sexual partners.

	Several predominantly Muslim nations and the Vatican reportedly did not
want such references included in the document, and the United States also
supported more conservative language. Though not widely reported in the
United States, some European reports of the conference spoke of an unlikely
"U.S.-Muslim alliance" in which the U.S. government found itself allied with
Egypt, the Gulf States, Malaysia and Pakistan.

	"Islamic governments, with the connivance of the Bush administration,
succeeded in watering down the final declaration of commitment," the
London-based Guardian newspaper reported on June 28, noting the Bush
administration's political support by conservative Christians in the United
States.

	"It's a compromise paper and there is not much new in it," Dr. Christoph
Benn told ENI in an interview at the end of the session, expressing some
disappointment, but not surprise, at the document's final form, particularly
over the exclusion of at-risk groups. He also said plans for managing a
proposed global AIDS fund remained vague.

	Nonetheless, Benn, the coordinator of a four-member WCC ecumenical team
attending the UN special session, said the document and the special session
itself had to be viewed, "on balance" in a positive way, saying Aids
activists could feel their work had now been given new international
support.

	"It was very significant because it sends a message from the United Nations
on the importance of the most significant health issue facing the world,"
Benn told ENI. "This is something on a new scale."

	Benn, a doctor and staff member of the German Institute for Medical
Mission, based in Tubingen, Germany, and Kurian, also a member of the team,
said the challenge now is for AIDS activists in the faith community to work
more broadly with governments and inter-governmental bodies such as the
United Nations.

	"We really need to see the churches, governments, non-governmental
organizations - all of them - really upscale their response," Kurian told
ENI. "We've all done far too little."

	Benn said the declaration acknowledged the role of the faith community in
fighting AIDS - a first for a UN document - and that the session itself gave
new prominence to the WCC and other faith groups. The WCC, for example, was
one of six groups asked to speak at a final plenary session before the
General Assembly voted on the declaration - a tribute, Benn said, to the
contribution of religious organizations both before and during the session.

	In preparatory meetings for the session, the WCC and other groups had
argued that AIDS prevention work should not focus solely on the use of
condoms, saying this issue was polarizing the discussion.

	Instead, in a statement read before the general assembly, the WCC promoted
what Benn described as "a balanced approach" - educational efforts that
emphasize both condoms and fidelity between couples and abstinence or
delayed sexual activity for young people. It also supported greater
partnership between the international faith community, governments, the UN
and other organizations.

	Sister Patricia Walsh, a nurse in Zimbabwe who works with the International
Christian Aids Network and another member of the ecumenical team, said she
had attended a number of international AIDS conferences and finds the
transition between the world of her work in Africa and the world of
large-scale conferences often jarring and unsettling.

	"I sometimes wonder why I go," she told ENI. Nonetheless, she said, the UN
special session was important. "If this puts AIDS on the international map,
in the long-run it will have been worthwhile."

_______________________________________________
pcusaNews mailing list
pcusaNews@pcusa.org

To unsubscribe, go to this web address:
http://pcusa01.pcusa.org/mailman/listinfo/pcusanews