Delegates battle over words at UN AIDS meeting
[ 2006-06-02 09:48 ]
Mrs. Bush and U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan will open Friday's final session of the three-day
high-level meeting on AIDS. More than a dozen heads of state and 100 ministers
are in New York for the gathering.
Thursday, day two of the affair, saw
intense negotiations among government delegations and more than one-thousand
activist groups on a blueprint for global action on HIV/AIDS. The document, to
be adopted as a declaration at the closing session, calls for spending as much
as $23 billion on AIDS prevention and treatment programs over the next five
years.
U.N. General Assembly President Jan Eliasson is
presiding over the negotiating process as it winds
down
. He says activist groups are pushing for a
commitment by governments to do much more for victims of the epidemic. "We heard
clearly that people living with HIV/AIDS and vulnerable groups, must be
recognized as partners, and as a central component of a more urgent and more
comprehensive response to the pandemic. They must hold their governments to
account for their performance against their time-bound commitments," he said.
Secretary-General Annan met Thursday with several HIV-positive activists
attending the conference. He said they had urged him to insist on a
strongly-worded final declaration. "One of them pleaded, please don't kill us
with diplomacy. Come up with real proposals that will help us on the ground," he
said.
Details of the declaration were still being negotiated
late Thursday, with several delicate
issues still in the balance.
Much of the discussion at the conference has focused on women, at a time when
female HIV infections are rising sharply in many parts of the world. U.N.
experts say three out of four young people living with HIV in sub-Sarahan Africa
are female.
Ludfine Anyango, a young HIV-positive
Kenyan woman, told the conference the spread of AIDS in many countries
is closely linked to a culture of violence against women. "Where
violence thrives, whether it is phychological, whether it
is physical, or whether it is sexual, there HIV/AIDS also thrives, because violence against
women diminishes your self-esteem, diminishes your self-confidence, and you cannot negotiate for safer sex. And therefore,
we must address the issue of violence against women. I think that is really,really
a fundamental issue," she said.
Another delegate to the conference, former Irish President Mary Robinson
expressed impatience at the slow pace of progress in achieving equality for
education for women. Robinson, now director of the Ethical globalization
Initiative, says women must have equal access, not just to education, but to
secondary education. "It is education at secondary schools that helps young
girls to have the power to say 'no'. To have the capacity to stand up for
themselves and assert. Because it's all about who has the power. And we need the
voices of women who know what the situation is, know the many barriers and the
discrimination," she said.
Activists have sharply criticized U.S. policies on HIV/AIDS during the
three-day gathering, and urged the Bush administration to increase spending on
programs to combat the pandemic in the developing world.
U.S. officials note that Washington is easily the biggest donor to the UNAIDS
program. Washington has already committed to a five-year, $15 billion plan, the
largest international health initiative ever undertaken to battle a single
disease.
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Vocabulary:
wind
down : 逐步結(jié)束
delicate :
需慎重考慮的
（來(lái)源：VOA
英語(yǔ)點(diǎn)津姍姍編輯） |
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