I am Tabris from Perú. I feel happy for this opportunity of representing young people from my country.
If in fact in my country there are laws that ensure rights of people living with HIV/AIDS, they are not often fulfilled, and regardless, teenagers and young people are not covered by such legislation. I want to share the need that young people have for real spaces to talk and reflect about sexuality, sexualities, gender equality and human rights with peers and adults.
This Saturday 27th May 2006 I see myself travelling for the first time to the US and as exciting as this may seem, my visit there will be a little different.
As a youth delegate at this years UNGASS review meeting I expect to get a clearer and better way forward to the 2001 Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS especially on issues relevant to youth, their programmes, policies and further advocate for change in funding policies/procedures.
As a young person growing up in a country with one of the highest prevalence rates in the world is one of the toughest things a young women trying to establish herself should have to face. Botswana has a population of 1.7 million with a prevelance rate of 17.1% in 2004 (NACA).
This Memorial Day we remember 25 million souls lost to 25 years of AIDS. Motivated by the death of the love of my early life in 1996 from AIDS, I started thinking about death politically.Carl died just months before medications the developed world takes for granted became available, and months after the US Navy denied him compassionate access to those meds after a five-year study in which he participated. Months meant the difference in him seeing his two sons grow up and our lives continuing together.
In 1997, I began a journey working with Oregon’s Death with Dignity Law, culminating early this year in the US Supreme Court affirming Oregon’s law 6-3: the federal government had no right to interfere in a doctor or pharmacist’s compassionate decision to alleviate suffering at the request of the patient. Strict safeguards make that once controversial law a model of compromise among medical, legal, political, ethics, policy, mental health, faith, hospice, and most importantly, patient and family communities. Compromise works.
Five years ago, the United Nations General Assembly held a special session on HIV/AIDS.This was the first time all UN members had convened under the auspices of the General Assembly to address a specific health issue.In view of the staggering nature of the pandemic, the member states adopted in 2001 a 10-year plan, known as the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS – to guide international effort to stem the spread of the disease and care for those infected by it.From May 31-June 2, the international community will convene once again to take stock of progress in implementing the action plan, evaluate successful and unsuccessful efforts, and chart a course for the future.
A new report comes from the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition as covered in the Washington Post, “UN Releases Report on AIDS Treatment.”The report, Missing the Target: Off Target for 2010 – details how the global community is behind in reaching its goals for treatment distribution and research.
The report cites evidence of progress as well as impediments in various countries, and it takes each major program involved in the fight to task. Specifically, the report states that The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), “has expanded the reach of its treatment delivery and has initiated a variety of activities to build health systems. While continuing these efforts it must, however, end counterproductive policy prescriptions that undermine service delivery and do more to build human resources capacity in countries.”
In the lead-up to next week’s meeting on HIV/AIDS at the UN, a recent AFP article, “Thrown out of home, Nigerian women find solace in sisterhood,” is an apt reminder of the special challenges that so many women face in protecting themselves from infection when they have so little decision-making power in their relationships and in their lives. The article narrates the plight of 70 female divorcees gathered at a vocational training and support class in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, where Shari’ah Islamic law has been in place since 2000, and where girls often have little say in when and whom they marry.
Using misinformed arguments and political concerns, the House Appropriations committee rejected an amendment by a vote of 23-30 to direct funds already in the bill to UNFPA’s obstetric fistula prevention and treatment efforts, should the Administration not release the funds for other family planning and women’s empowerment efforts.Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick offered this compromise amendment to allow US support to UNFPA for very specific and non-controversial programs, as a constructive response to the Administration blocking the funding for the past four years.
Opponents said that inclusion of this amendment would “make it difficult to pass” the Foreign Operations bill on the floor – so much for meeting the public health needs of some of the world’s poorest women.Others threw their standard complaint into the mix, stating that this (in an extremely circuitous way) somehow supports abortion.
There are growing reports that the United States and a handful of other countries are objecting to certain language (e.g. reference to condoms, sexual and reproductive health – the usual!) in negotiations for a political declaration at next week’s UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS.The U.S. negotiating posture is hardly new…nor are its allies in this fight.It seems that the United States’ main ally at the United Nations this week during negotiations on HIV/AIDS has been Syria – yes, the same country that the Administration has declared to be part of the "Axis of Evil."
Rumor Mill hears that the emerging “Axis of Ideology” includes other fundamentalist representatives, all of which want to ignore the evidence as it relates to the importance of human rights, gender equality, comprehensive sexuality education, and sexual and reproductive health services in the fight to stem HIV/AIDS.Apparently, where science is concerned, the axis adheres to a strict, abstinence-only posture.
Improvements to studies in women’s health have been long overdue and slowly improving.Apparently some of the current policies towards women’s health look past the woman as individual, and see her only as potential incubator.Among them, recently released guidelines from the CDC regarding the status of women and their health care are causing great sparks, particularly in the blogosphere.
According to UPI, the CDC is now recommending that “All women who are able to become pregnant should treat themselves and be treated by healthcare professionals as being pre-pregnant.”This includes preteen girls just beginning menstruation, as well as women who have no plans to become pregnant – ever.
Former US Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher joined a coalition of advocates calling on the Bush Administration to promote prevention of HIV/AIDS over pursuit of personal ideological beliefs that endanger the lives of millions, as reported in the Washington Blade.
Satcher was part of a panel discussing the findings in a new report from the Open Society Institute, HIV/AIDS Policy in the United States, Nicaragua, Senegal, Ukraine, Viet Nam.
