UNITED NATIONS, July 18 (AFP) - The head of the UN AIDS agency on Monday urged the Security Council to fully implement measures to improve AIDS testing and treatment for UN peacekeepers and the populations they are meant to protect.
Briefing the council on the implementation five years ago of Resolution 1308 on to combat AIDS among international peacekeepers, Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS, told the council: "While significant progress has been made ...the threat posed by the AIDS epidemic has not dwindled."
"Last year, more people became infected with HIV (the AIDS virus) and more people died of AIDS than in any previous year," he added, noting that eight billion dollars was likely to be spent on fighting AIDS in low and middle-income countries this year, up from 1.5 billion five years ago.
Approximately 40 million people are living with HIV in the world today.
"Despite all that has been achieved since 2000, it is clear that there is still a long way to go, a fact made very evident by the recent reports of sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekepers," Piot said.
Sexual misconduct by UN peacekeepers was put under scrutiny last year after refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) lodged numerous complaints. A UN report in January concluded that peacekeepers in that country had had sex with girls as young as 13 in exchange for eggs, milk or cash sums as low as one dollar.
Soon afterwards, the UN adopted a "zero tolerance" policy regarding sexual misconduct by UN personnel, including a "non-fraternization" rule that bars its peacekeepers from having sex with locals, and Annan commissioned a report by Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid al-Hussein, Jordan's UN envoy and the UN chief's special adviser on this issue.
Among other things, the Zeid report emphasized proper training for UN forces and called for the establishment of a professional team to investigate allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peacekeepers.
Piot said his agency was now assisting 53 UN member states to address AIDS among uniformed personnel with comprehensive programs including HIV education, condom promotion and distribution and strengthening of voluntary and confidential counseling ad testing.
He said one million AIDS awareness cards, in 13 languages, had been distributed among peacekeepers and national security forces.
"Forty-three million HIV infections could be averted in Africa over the next 20 years if our efforts today encompass both short-term pragmatic prevention and treatment solutions combined with long-term strategic responses that focus on addressing the epidemic's root social, economic and political causes," he added.
Stressing that the goal of Resolution 1308 was to ensure that all peacekeepers and all uniformed personnel be given the knowledge and means to protect themselves and others from HIV, Piot urged the Council "to make this an explicit and time-bound goal."
Jean-Marie Guehenno, the UN under secretary general for peacekeeping operations, also told the council that "strengthening voluntary counselling and testing facilities across our peacekeeping missions is a priority."
He noted that his agency and the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) faced the daunting challenge of providing AIDS awareness training to 66,000 uniformed personnel and more than 13,000 international and national civilian staff serving in 17 peacekeeping and related field operations.
To test the effectiveness of UN AIDS training programs, more than 660 peacekeepers were randomly selected and individually interviewed in a survey jointly conducted in Liberia by UNAIDS, DPKO and the Atlanta-based US Centers for Disease Control in May and June, Guehenno said.
A disappointing finding, he said, was that only a small number had received training from within their battalions or detachments and less than two percent had been briefed on AIDS by their commanding officers while in the mission area.
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