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UN agrees global Aids declaration
BBC News
June 02, 2006

http://www.aegis.com/news/bbc/2006/BB060602.html

A UN conference on Aids has agreed a declaration designed to be a global blueprint for tackling the disease.

The draft - due to be adopted by the General Assembly later - commits countries to work towards universal access to Aids care by 2010.

However, aid agencies condemned what they said was a "weak" document, with few specific targets for governments.

One said omitting references to homosexuals, prostitutes and drug-users rendered them "invisible".

"We are furious," said Aditi Sharma, HIV/Aids co-ordinator for ActionAid International.

"It is incomprehensible how negotiators could come up with such a weak declaration when we needed urgent action to stop 8,500 people dying and 13,500 people from becoming infected every day."

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the final declaration had come out better than he had expected, but he regretted it was not more frank.

"You need to call a spade a spade," he told the BBC in an interview.

"In this kind of fight you cannot be wishy-washy. People have to understand what you are saying - you cannot code it in a manner that people can interpret it as they want."

Peter Piot, the head of UNAids, the UN agency dealing with the disease, said the new draft was "much stronger" than previous versions.

Negotiations between about 150 countries had gone on until 0330 local time before they agreed on a final declaration.

On the issue of how to prevent the spread of Aids, America's priority policies of abstinence and fidelity top the list, followed by the use of condoms.

UN officials said the declaration referred to the importance of empowering women and girls, and used detailed language on prevention, including specific references to male and female condom use.

Certain countries from Africa and the Middle East frowned upon that terminology for fear of promoting promiscuity.

"Even though we may have differences of tactics, as was clear this week, we are all a critical piece of the same strategy," Mr Piot said.

"Not only is there room for everybody, there is also a need for everybody."

UK International Development Secretary Hilary Benn said he wished the document had been "a bit more frank about telling the truth that some groups - like sex workers, like drug users, like men who have sex with men - are more at risk".

The truth was, he added, that "some young women and men, from choice or necessity, exchange sex for money and for food".

Conservative countries had argued that this would amount to a support of illegal activities. Instead the draft refers only to "vulnerable" groups.

UNAids says Aids has killed more than 25 million people since it was first recognised in 1981.

It estimates that 38.6m people are living with HIV worldwide.

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