Wednesday morning, Advocates for Youth held a press conference that was attended by youth from a collection of nations. Former Bush administration AIDS czar Scott Evertz had spoken out against the administration he used to represent. I was surprised but thoroughly impressed to find that Mr. Evertz, the first openly gay official to be chosen for the current administration, pulled no punches in speaking out against the specifics of the administration's widely lauded PEPFAR plan. He referred to the profound lack of reality employed in conservative policymakers' treatment of LGBT youth: "If you teach them abstinence only until marriage, and it is illegal for them to marry: do you expect them to remain abstinent their entire lives?" he asked.
Mr. Evertz, while coyly remarking at how Advocates as well as other NGOs used to be the "thorn in his side," said he is now able to join them in lambasting current PEPFAR policy: "People keep asking me if US AIDS Policy has been hijacked by the far right. I'm not sure that it's been entirely hijacked, but let's just say they're on the plane," he remarked.
On Tuesday, members of the youth coalition began reaching out to their national delegations, advocating on behalf of their [img_assist|nid=215|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=75|height=100]peers using the training they acquired in a manner that was both articulate and authoritative.
I was able to sit in on a meeting between Ambassador Sealy with Carla and Dion, two Tobagonian youth activists, at the Trinidad and Tobago Permanent Mission to the UN. I was amazed at both the amount of time provided by the ambassador for both of them to explain the situation on the ground, to advocate a comprehensive ABCDEF policy for education and the reduction of stigma, and then the ambassador's own pledge to get the two in touch with their UNGASS delegation.
"This process is unprecedented in its lack of clarity, it is clear that the process is being made up as it goes along," was the comment made by one NGO representative with a long history of such negotiations at the UN. Still another experienced UN negotiator said "there is no clear understanding among the member nations of the language as it exists now, just bits and pieces -- the entire process is a disaster." But the process is grinding to a halt just as governmental representatives are arriving to join the negotiations on the declaration, assuming there will be a declaration to sign. Or is it? The Rumor Mill is hearing all of this and more from sources involved in negotiations.
Si hay algo que de verdad me agrado y me lleno de energía y positivismo fue la Marcha de Banderas, se hizo desde el frente del edifico de las Naciones Unidas en donde ya sabes se hará mañana viernes la reunión de revisión de Alto Nivel de la Asamblea general de Naciones Unidas en VIH-sida.
No, no es el de la escuela, se refiere a la política oficial del gobierno de USA , A : abstinencia ... fíjate, encima lo ponen primero ...B : Be faithful, o sea se fiel ... si claro, díganselo a Blanca Nieves y sus siete, ojo, son siete enanitos, sin contar a un príncipe que de azul solo tiene el nombre o los lentes de contacto que se yo, y C que quiere decir que uses Condon.
Ha sido un día realmente excitante, empiezo contándote que hubo una conferencia de prensa por la mañana de hoy, antes de eso, que crees? Me dieron una Hermosa cámara digital con las que he empezado a tomar algunas fotografías, jejeje, dicho sea de paso, todas las fotos que veas en mi blogsito las tome yo.... A ver, se presentaron cuatro personas, Scott Evertz, antiguo director de la Oficina Nacional de SIDA de USA, John Santelli, medico y profesor de la Universidad de Columbia y Beatrice Were, fundadora de la comunidad de Mujeres que viven con SIDA de Uganda, todos presentados por James Wagoner, presidente de Advocates for Youth. Todos hablaron del problema que los programas de prevención del VIH basados solo en la abstinencia plantean para el mundo de hoy, así pues, la abstinencia como única forma de prevención juega en contra de los pilares mismos de la Prevención: Los derechos, el respeto y la responsabilidad.
When the head of working US Delegation to the UN meetings on HIV/AIDS, Ambassador Jimmy Kolker, talks about "removing the stigma associated with the disease" as an important path toward increasing testing, educating and treating HIV positive people to reduce infection rates - the world should rejoice. When he fails to see how the administration he serves undermines those words with ever more powerful actions, you begin to see why the world is increasingly frustrated with policies from the US.
The Bush Administration should stop stigmatizing the communities most at risk for HIV altogether, not just the disease.
I was pretty excited to hear that self-made global development guru Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the UN Millennium Project, announced yesterday that investing in sexual and reproductive health is the key to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Stop traffic! Way to go Jeffrey Sachs!
The 178-page report accompanying this momentous announcement, Public Choices, Private Decisions: Sexual and Reproductive Health and the Millennium Development Goals, kind of reminds me of the Cairo Programme of Action, a beautifully comprehensive global action plan that puts women's reproductive health and rights at the center of international development. The Programme of Action was adopted by the world's governments at a conference back in 1994, and reaffirmed and extended at numerous regional and global meetings thereafter, including the 1995 Beijing conference on women, which itself produced a totally fantastic internationally agreed comprehensive action plan on women's health and rights.
While rumors of the US taking a negotiating stand promoting "evidence-informed" as opposed to "evidence-based" research escalates at meetings about the greatest public heatlh crisis known to humankind, the conservative ideologues who back such language are "evidence-invisible."They have not even applied to participate in any of the public forums where their ideas could heard and debated.
At the recently concluded hearing of Civil Society and governmental representatives, not one NGO spoke in favor the abstinence-only until marriage policies that others were complaining about. No one with a conservative perspective was there to explain why condoms are bad, to show the "evidence" that "informs" their ideology or to articulate clearly why public health data should not be the basis for decisions about the AIDS pandemic.
The frustration can be seen on people's faces, and heard in their voices. The just ended joint meeting of governmental and Civil Society representatives at the UN HIV/AIDS meeting was a portrait in the difficult nature of diplomacy. The governmnetal officials said little, artfully, while representatives of NGOs said time and again, "I will not speak diplomatically" before starting to list the real world circumstances they face everyday -- the very problems the world community has assembled to address -- and the subject of the increasingly tense negotiations as the hours tick by toward the Friday deadline for a declaration.
Peter Piot, UNAIDS Chief, said last night that he is angry at the prospect of an immoral declaration coming out of these meetings, one that would fail to address the very real state of HIV/AIDS after 25 years of experience, public heatlh research and dedicated work by passionate people worldwide.
