As I write, Victor from Sweden and Edford from Zambia are presenting on message building. The group, after yesterday's intensive crush of trainings and workshops, have become much more comfortable and light-hearted. Many are adorned in beige hats with "WYP?" (What's Your Position) on the front, from a youth awareness campaign which provides condoms to youth in nightclubs in Trinidad & Tobago.
I've been sitting down with folks during breaks to talk about some of their programs on the ground. Two major themes have really struck out to me:
Firstly, the passion, inspiration and intelligence of my generation is truly phenomenal. Looking around the room this morning, I am periodically moved to wonderment by the physical and symbolic beauty I find within the diversity of people in this room.
This post includes the opening footage from the panel discussion on "Public Choices, Private Decisions: Sexual and Reproductive Health and the Millennium Development Goals."
Nils Daulaire, president of the Global Health Council, introduces the report, and its author, Stan Bernstein.
Global problems are thorny and complex, yet somehow we expect to be able to come up with easy solutions to them. The global HIV/AIDS pandemic is a perfect example. HIV/AIDS touches all manner of nerves and taboos: how our cultures deal with sex and sexuality, how power is distributed between men and women, how much our societies value health and education over other kinds of spending, and how willing we are to recognize young people’s human rights, in theory and in practice.
This is incredible. In this room are leading youth HIV activists from 20 or so countries in both the Global North and South as well as a wide variety of organizations. Tsutomo, a peer educator from Japan, Keesha, a national organizer from Jamaica, Amr, Middle East Coordinator for the Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS from Egypt…collectively we represent every region of the world and every sector of HIV mobilization. I’ll be blogging in particular with Tabris, a soft-spoken Peruvian youth educator, and Tsholofelo, a young Botswanan activist whose bright skirts and tanktops are bringing some much-needed color to this gathering of suits. Our collective knowledge and social capital is massive, the energy is palpable, and the curiousity levels are high. It’s going to be hard to remain on-task with UNGASS preparation with 60 young, attractive adults in one room.
On the eve of the UN Special Session on HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS Chief Peter Piot claimed that the world community has gained momentum in the fight against AIDS, but told Reuters that “it was also crucial to address issues such as homophobia, sexual violence and inequality between the sexes which are ensuring HIV/AIDS is a long-term epidemic.”
Unfortunately, those very issues are exactly why conservative ideologues continue to promote strategies of delay, when what the world needs is to lock arms and work together.
As we reported in Rumor Mill the US is now in league with Syria in an “Axis of Ideology”, and the ideologues who believe they own the President are exporting their polarizing politicsfrom Congress to the international stage.
[img_assist|nid=215|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=75|height=100]I’m in day one of a Youth Summit at the UN Population Fund, and I’m pumped to meet the international youth delegation that’s been assembled. I’m curious as to how the summit planners are going to mobilize and equip such a disparate group for all the media and scheduling madness of any large international conference. More critically, though, I’m apprehensive and excited at discovering what exactly we’re facing in putting youth at the forefront of the UNGASS 06 agenda. It seems highly likely that the UNGASS review committee will face difficult political squabbling throughout the process with a US delegation that appears selected largely on political grounds, rather than on healthcare experience.
