`UN-AIDS' INITIATIVE WILL STRENGTHEN, EXPAND RESPONSE TO PANDEMIC, SAYS SECRETARY-GENERAL IN WORLD AIDS DAY MESSAGE
Press Release
SG/SM/5829
`UN-AIDS' INITIATIVE WILL STRENGTHEN, EXPAND RESPONSE TO PANDEMIC, SAYS SECRETARY-GENERAL IN WORLD AIDS DAY MESSAGE
19951130 Following is the text of Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's message on World AIDS Day, 1 December 1995:The commemoration of World AIDS Day by the United Nations assumes particular significance this year. In January a new initiative, UN-AIDS, will bring together the skills, experience and expertise of the World Bank, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
The United Nations is mandated by its Charter to achieve international cooperation in solving international problems of a social and humanitarian nature. UN-AIDS reflects that purpose and mission. The United Nations system has been deeply involved with global response to the HIV/AIDS since the early stages of the crisis. The WHO convened the first international meeting on AIDS in 1983.
In my very first report as Secretary-General to the General Assembly, in 1992, I stressed that the United Nations must become an organization which views social cooperation with the same sense of responsibility and urgency as political and security commitments. It must take full advantage of the central coordinating capacity available to it on humanitarian issues. It must be an Organization whose operational strength supports its policy objectives. UN-AIDS gives expression to that resolve.
UN-AIDS will strengthen and expand national capacities to respond to the pandemic, whose dangers and dimensions are yet to be fully grasped in many vulnerable parts of the world.
The WHO Global Programme on AIDS has been reflected in national AIDS programmes in virtually every nation on earth. It has conducted and supported research. It has sought to enlist a broad array of allies in the global response. UN-AIDS is the logical outcome of this search for a partnership. It is a sharing of responsibilities within the international system.
UN-AIDS will be a programme dependent upon, and sustained by, the international community. Non-governmental organizations, medical research faculties and programmes, educational institutions and the media and thinking men and women everywhere will be needed in this universal, human effort. We must seize the enormous opportunities of the new millennium. It is in that spirit and sense of hope that we commemorate World AIDS Day this year.
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