AIDS as an International Political Issue by Peter Piot

Author:Peter Piot
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: AIDS, international relations, science, controversy, medical policy, health policy
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2014-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

2000/2001: The Tipping Point

Retrospectively, it seems that the new millennium marked a turning point in the global fight against AIDS, the “tipping point” as Malcolm Gladwell14 called it. Tireless work on the political front and the search for extra financial resources needed for a change in scale in the fight against AIDS began to bear fruit. Thus, the first session of the UN Security Council of the new millennium, on January 8, 2000, was devoted to AIDS in Africa. Vice President Al Gore exceptionally presided over the Security Council with Secretary-General Kofi Annan at his side. For the first time in its history the Council, whose exclusive focus until then had been on classic security, conflict, and peace, debated a health problem—AIDS. This was a unique opportunity to bring the AIDS issue beyond the health agenda to what really matters in international politics: security. The meeting was made possible through the tenacity of the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Richard Holbrooke, who had to convince his colleagues that the pandemic constituted a new type of security challenge. The formal rationale for putting AIDS on the agenda of the Security Council was that it could affect peacekeeping operations, and for some members had the concept of human security as its theoretical basis. The debate was the first enlargement of the concept of security to include more than an absence of insecurity, or war. The same year the United States National Intelligence Council published a report presenting AIDS as a potential politically destabilizing factor and internal threat in most affected countries. Fortunately, some of their scenarios proved too alarmist, particularly because of exaggerated predictions for the spread of HIV in Asia.

Another result of debates in the Security Council was the adoption of Resolution 1308 in July 2000, basically declaring that there should be no UN peacekeeping operations without HIV prevention. It also encouraged states to develop HIV programs for their military and police. The reason for Resolution 1308 was the potential impact of HIV infection on armed forces, a group with often high-risk sexual behavior, and the accusations that peacekeeping troops contributed to the introduction of HIV in Cambodia after the fall of the genocidal Khmer Rouge. Peacekeeping troops may come from countries with high HIV prevalence, posted to countries with low prevalence, and vice versa. Risks of HIV infection exist on both sides.

Regional and Global Initiatives

As of 2000 a number of regional initiatives were launched by countries particularly affected by HIV, raising awareness of the need to act in their region. In the 1990s the Caribbean had become the second most affected region in the world. In February 2001 at the annual summit of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Prime Ministers Denzil Douglas (St. Kitts and Nevis) and Owen Arthur (Barbados) launched the Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV/ AIDS (PANCAP), together with Sir George Alleyne of the Pan American Health Organization, Yolanda Simons representing the Caribbean Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, and myself on behalf of UNAIDS. PANCAP aims at reinforcing

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