Washington cuts AIDS funds
Africa needs help, gets empty promises
By Leslie Feinberg
Just six weeks after President George W. Bush
grandstanded across the African continent, vowing to allocate
billions to fight AIDS, Washington is already reneging.
An official of the State Department announced Aug. 27 that
it was cutting funding to one of seven agencies that jointly
run an AIDS prevention and awareness program in Liberia, Sierra
Leone, Sudan and Sri Lanka. The loss of resources would also
force the agency to cancel a new project in Angola.
The State Department targeted the agency—Marie Stopes
International—for family-planning work it does in China
in conjunction with the United Nations Population Fund.
Earlier, in July 2002, the White House had blocked a
$34-million award to the UN group for its work.
In both cases the Bush administration claimed it was
enforcing a 1985 law that bans U.S. federal funds for groups
that assist in “enforced” sterilization or
abortion--a charge Washington has leveled against the Chinese
government. U.S. officials admit they have no evidence against
either agency.
“However, organizations that work on reproductive
health and AIDS argue that the decision betrays the Bush
administration’s wide hostility to abortion,” the
Guardian of Britain reported on Aug. 28. “Its commitment
to a right-wing Christian agenda has led it to promote
abstinence as a strategy against HIV-AIDS in preference to
condoms, they say.”
Following the State Department pronouncement excluding Marie
Stopes from assistance, the other six groups refused any
further monies from the department’s Bureau of
Population, Refugees and Migration.
In May, Bush had ballyhooed his endorsement of a
$15-billion, five-year emergency bill to battle AIDS in Africa
and the Caribbean.
But the president says he has an “ABC” approach
to fighting the disease: “A” for abstinence,
“B” for being faithful and, as a last resort,
“C” for condom use when "appropriate."
Fully one-third of the $15 billion was earmarked for
promoting celibacy--a plum to right-wing Christian groups that
have thrown troops into Republican election campaigns. They
claim to be experts on the subject.
The United Nations Population Fund that came under fire from
the Bush administration last July had been distributing
millions of condoms in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions.
Condoms have been shown to be the most effective method of
preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS.
And the bill governing the $15 billion in AIDS funding has a
clause attacking reproductive rights. Organizations that deal
with AIDS prevention and abortion services have to keep their
abortion and family-planning programs financially and
physically separate from their AIDS work or lose funds. So a
health clinic providing care in poor and rural communities
would either have to build a new clinic or shut down its
family-planning work.
Gloria Feldt of Planned Parenthood characterized this as
another “war is peace” Bush spin.
Well put. Congress has already whittled down this
year’s allotment of that five-year aid plan--$3
billion--by one-third.
The aid is desperately needed. The pandemic has cut a deep
swath across Africa. Millions of lives have been lost. And of
the 42 million people in the world believed to be living with
the infection today, 29 million live in sub-Saharan Africa,
according to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS.
The African continent--which was plundered for hundreds of
years by slave traders and colonial powers, and today continues
to be mined for profits by transnational banks and
corporations--needs reparations to fight the AIDS epidemic.
Reprinted from the Sept. 11, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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