July 17, 2000
Link to UN Security Council Resolution 1308
The Security Council voted unanimously on Monday to intensify AIDS education among peacekeepers and encourage voluntary testing so they did not contract or spread HIV/AIDS while on U.N. missions. However, several ambassadors from poor nations said prevention was not a substitute for cheap drugs and funds being put into the development of a vaccine.
Initiated by U.S. ambassador Richard Holbrooke the resolution makes AIDS an international security issue for the first time by placing it before the council. Several other U.N. bodies are working on the virus as a health issue. It urges countries to consider developing effective long-term strategies to roll back the epidemic particularly in the military. The measure also encourages voluntary and confidential HIV/AIDS testing, counseling and treatment ``as an important part of their preparation for their participation in peacekeeping operations.''
The resolution calls on UNAIDS, the U.N. coordinating U.N. body on the disease, to further track individual nations' polices of AIDS prevention, testing, counseling and treatment.
In negotiations on the resolution, however, some countries were still uneasy about the Security Council, rather than other bodies, taking action on AIDS deleted several provisions. Russia, for one, cut out a line of the resolution that would have kept the issue on the council's agenda. Neither Russia nor China participated in the debate as did the other 13 council members, although they voted in favor. Some peacekeeping contributors, including India, also were reported to have objected to directives from the council. And Indonesian envoy, Hazairin Pohan, questioned the linkage between peacekeeping and AIDS, saying there was no clear evidence of the connection or statistics.
But Holbrooke said statistics weren't needed to know the problem exists. ``Peacekeepers bring AIDS with them and take it home. Human nature is human nature,'' he told reporters. ''Wherever peacekeepers go they attract prostitutes.'' He said countries which objected to the resolution would benefit the most ``but denial is a fact of life.''. ``We must avoid the supreme irony which would occur if, in the course of trying to prevent conflict, U.N. peacekeepers spread a disease even more deadly than the conflict,'' he said.
Holbrooke brought to the U.N. three congresswomen, all Democrats active in AIDS causes -- Carolyn Maloney of New York, Barbara Lee of California and Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas.
The United Nations in March decided to distribute a condom a day to each soldier it planned to send abroad this year.
Dr. Peter Piot, the executive director of UNAIDS, told the 15-member council its resolution was ``historic'' for firmly saying there was a link between AIDS and security. But he warned the issue was not just cheaper drugs but a proper health service to train and treat victims. He said that beating back the epidemic in Africa alone would cost $3 billion a year for health care, 10 times what is spent today.
Piot, fresh from the just-ended international AIDS conference in Durban, South Africa, said there were now 16 African countries in which more than 10 percent of the population between 15 and 49 years of age was infected. ``No wonder that AIDS is the first health and development issue to be considered a threat to global peace and security,'' he told the council, chaired by Jamaica's Foreign Minister Paul Robertson, whose country holds the presidency for July.
Speakers from Namibia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Tunisia and others said prevention was not enough if poor nations had no inaccessibility to HIV drugs because of the high prices pharmaceutical companies were charging. ``It is unacceptable that the majority of mankind be denied the benefits of medical progress,'' Tunisian ambassador Said Ben Mustapha said. ``Treatment and drugs should be available at affordable prices.''
Malaysia's ambassador Agam Hasmy noted that ``the giant pharmaceutical companies have thus far denied developing countries the right to produce cheaper drugs to save the lives of their people.'' But he said there was hope in discussions five major drug companies were having with UNAIDS. Some 18.8 million people have died of AIDS to date, 3.8 million of them children, according to UNAIDS. Nearly twice that many, 34.3 million, are now living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. In 1999 alone, 5.4 million were newly infected, some 4 million of them in sub-Sahara Africa.
