DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS INACTION ON AIDS NO LONGER AN OPTION; AFRICA FACING DISASTER WITHOUT PARALLEL IN HUMAN HISTORY

Press Release
DSG/SM/80

DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS INACTION ON AIDS NO LONGER AN OPTION; AFRICA FACING DISASTER WITHOUT PARALLEL IN HUMAN HISTORY

UN Symposium Statement Stresses Plight of Orphans of Disease, Resulting Strain on Government Services as Safety Nets Unravel

This is the text of remarks by Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette at the symposium at Headquarters today in observance of World AIDS Day:

There are few facts more terrifying than the statistics of AIDS. Today, we will examine a new face to this human tragedy -- the tragedy of children orphaned by AIDS. Since the epidemic began, more than 11 million children have lost their mothers to AIDS. And this, we fear, is only the beginning. Today, we will hear from three children of three continents who have been orphaned by AIDS. On behalf of all the United Nations, I welcome you, Andrew, Khomsan and Precious, and I salute your courage.

In the next decade, the number of AIDS orphans is expected to grow in Asia, the Americas, and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. But Africa already faces a disaster unparalleled in human history: it is home to 90 per cent of the world’s AIDS orphans. AIDS now kills more people in Africa than war. Most of those who die are young. In some African countries, more than one child in 10 is struggling to survive without its mother.

AIDS attacks young adults in the prime of their lives, at the peak of their earning and parenting years. As the new UN-AIDS report tells us, 5.6 million people have become infected with HIV this year alone. Half of them were young people under the age of 25. They will probably die before they turn 35, leaving young orphans behind. These children will be traumatized even before a parent’s death, as they watch their mother or father fade and weaken through illness.

Their loss risks being compounded by stigma in a world that still equates illness, especially AIDS, with shame. They may lose their inheritance or their homes. They may suffer discrimination and financial insecurity. They may be forced into sexual abuse or prostitution, which in turn risks exposing them to the AIDS virus. They may be denied education as their family can no longer afford to pay for everyone to go school. Usually, girls will be the first to suffer. For these young people, there is hardly anywhere to turn.

AIDS is generating orphans so quickly that family and Government structures can no longer cope. Traditional safety nets are unravelling. Government infrastructures and health services in already impoverished sub-Saharan Africa have

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been strained to breaking point. As more adults die young of AIDS, families and communities can barely fend for themselves, let alone take care of orphans. Experts once predicted a society of grandparents caring for grandchildren. Today that prediction has come true. A generation of orphans is being raised by grandparents or, worse, are having to raise themselves.

Believing AIDS is someone else’s problem is simply not an option anymore. The AIDS crisis requires all of us to work together on all fronts.

UN-AIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, is already showing us the way. Because AIDS has become far more than a health crisis, UN-AIDS brings together seven co-sponsors from different parts of the United Nations family with mandates ranging from health to development to drug and crime prevention in a cohesive and broad-based partnership against the epidemic. It raises awareness of AIDS as a major development threat. It monitors the global epidemic and tracks the response to it. It works to identify and disseminate “best practice” -– the valuable lessons learned over the past decade-and-a-half about how to care for those infected, how to support orphans and other survivors, and how to stem the tide of new infections. It brokers new forms of partnership with Governments and civil society, including the business sector and people living with AIDS.

Partnerships are what we need if we are to help the children left behind. For the sake of children orphaned by AIDS, and the communities that are trying so courageously to care for them, we must make use of the valuable blueprint we will be given later today when Peter Piot, the Executive Director of UN-AIDS, outlines his Call to Action for the Children Left Behind.

As the Call of Action tells us, no single actor or action alone is enough. Partnerships are needed at the family and community level, the government level and the global level to meet the needs and rights of children orphaned by AIDS. To empower and support families and communities caring for orphans; to break the conspiracy of stigma and silence; to keep the plight of AIDS orphans high on the international agenda.

Today, I join Dr. Piot in issuing a call for action on all these fronts, to translate human tragedy into human hope. To give young people hit by the tragedy of AIDS the hope that they do have somewhere to turn. Let that be our mission statement for the new millennium.

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