PRESS CONFERENCE BY CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS ON HIV/AIDS

The current high-level meeting to assess the international response to HIV/AIDS was in danger of ending in failure, warned members of several civil society organizations today at a Headquarters press conference.

“We are very, very upset and disappointed at the state of the political declaration”, said Olayide Akanni, from Journalists against AIDS Nigeria.  “We think that the Governments that are negotiating are not taking into consideration the key issues that concern us.”

Ms. Akanni said that certain Governments had been introducing “unfavourable” text, aimed at excluding important groups, into the declaration.  She singled out the African Group for special criticism, saying that African countries had clearly stated their goals and targets for universal access by 2010 at a meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, three weeks ago.  The African bloc was not using that text, she said. 

“We are very worried that, if this trend continues, we might come out of here with a very weak outcome document, which is going to negate all that we of civil society have stood for”, Ms. Akanni said.

“Our Governments are failing us”, said Khensani Mavasa of the Treatment Action Campaign, South Africa.  “When we look at the issue of African countries which are refusing the issue of targets, that shows that there is still the problem of the lack of political commitment.”  Without agreement on targets, Ms. Mavasa said, the current declaration would be weaker than the one in 2001.

Laura Villa Torres of the Youth Coalition in Mexico said that the question of sexual and reproductive rights in connection with HIV/AIDS also deserved greater consideration.  She pointed out that Latin America and the Caribbean were seeing a “feminization of HIV/AIDS”, and half of the new infections were in young people.  She also emphasized the importance of setting targets, as well as increasing funding for that region.

“Latin America and the Caribbean are not taken into account because we do not have as huge a pandemic as in other regions”, said Ms. Villa Torres.  “We need concrete targets, just to ensure we can follow up this agreement in the years to come.”

Artur Lutarewicz from the Social AIDS Committee in Warsaw highlighted the problems faced by injecting drug users.  He said that in Eastern Europe, 80 per cent of infections were the result of drug use.  In places like the Russian Federation, only 2 per cent of those affected had access to needle exchange programmes, he said.  Because methadone was against the law, there was also no possibility for substitution treatment, he added.

When asked which countries were drawing the groups’ anger, Ms. Akanni pointed to nations in northern Africa, and specifically named Egypt and Morocco.  She accused those countries of influencing Gabon, which spoke on behalf of the African Group, to adopt their ideologies, instead of those previously agreed upon in the Abuja meetings.

When asked which goals the African Group had abandoned during negotiations, Ms. Akanni listed references to vulnerable groups, as well as some of the targets regarding universal access.  Goals such as 80 per cent coverage for prevention and treatment by 2010 were no longer in the text, she said, because South Africa and other countries opposed them.

Further asked whether, even if the declaration proved to be less than what had been hoped for, the increased involvement of corporations in responding to HIV/AIDS was cause for optimism, Ms. Akanni said it was still important to hold Governments accountable, and the only way to do that was through a strong declaration.

“If you leave a watery text and all the countries sign onto it, then they’re not accountable”, she said.  “The corporate world, too, will not be accountable.”

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For information media • not an official record