Newsday - June 27, 2001
Laurie Garrett

The draft declaration will be subject to open debate and a final vote today, but the major contesting parties have signed on to the accord and it is expected to pass. This comes as an enormous relief to delegates from all over the world, AIDS activists and humanitarian organizations, given that Monday's gathering of the General Assembly's Special Session on AIDS witnessed a near breakdown in all discussion.

The goal of this historic special session-the first ever convened to discuss a matter of world health-was to reach global consensus on a plan of action against HIV. But HIV is a microbe acquired through means that are politically and culturally sensitive: intravenous drug use, homosexual intercourse, prostitution and promiscuous heterosexuality.

The UN AIDS Programme, working in consultation with most other UN agencies and numerous nongovernmental organizations, drafted a detailed declaration weeks ago, and negotiations over specific sensitive points have been in earnest ever since. The strongest objections came from the Organization of Islamic Countries, or OIC, which found the declaration highly offensive, both spiritually and in terms of their national laws.

On Monday, those countries used parliamentary procedures to filibuster the General Assembly's meeting for nearly three hours to prevent a gay and lesbian association representative from addressing the gathering. Matters grew testy, insiders told Newsday, in backroom negotiations over several points, notably references to homosexuality, to female equality and to tolerance of IV drug users. These issues had already been hotly debated over the weekend, in a meetings that ran until 3 a.m. Sunday and then until 2 a.m. Monday.

Negotiators thought a basic framework was in place by noon Monday, and were therefore stunned by the OIC's parliamentary maneuvers that afternoon.

At 5 p.m. yesterday, having worked long hours in an often tense atmosphere, the negotiators found common ground.

"This is an agreement within the spirit of the United Nations in that it addresses the multicultural aspects of the UN," Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the UN Population Fund, said in an interview. "Therefore, it must reach a minimum common denominator that all countries can agree upon. They have worked long and hard to find that minimum-in lots of long nights."

At the table, aided by the UN delegates of Australia and Senegal, were Canada (which spoke on behalf of the United States and Japan), Sweden (speaking on behalf of Europe), Chile (representing the Latin American nations), an African representative and OIC representation. Those present say that Chile forged the agreement between the two sides, with the Europeans most adamantly opposed to weakening the language of the original declaration, and the OIC adamant that much of the declaration be eliminated. At times, Chile's negotiator, Christian Maguiero, broke up arguments by warning the parties that their disputes were going to leave HIV-infected people all over the world without a signal of support from the United Nations, perhaps rendering their status worse than it had been before the special session convened.

In the end, explained Obaid and sources involved in the negotiations who asked not to be identified, a handful of key changes were made, largely in concessions to the Organization of Islamic Countries. The original declaration listed steps to be taken to slow AIDS, consistently using the phrase, "countries will..." That has been dropped in favor of softer language that suggests countries will "commit to address."

All references to homosexuals, prostitutes and IV drug users have been dropped, in favor of what one source described as "strong public health phrases." For example, prevention efforts ought to be aimed at highly vulnerable groups, which originally included homosexuals, IV drug users and sex industry workers. The new language says that, "By 2003, develop and/or strengthen national strategies, policies and programmes to promote and protect the health of those identifiable groups which currently have high or increasing rates of HIV infection or which public health information indicates are at greatest risk and most vulnerable to new infection."

Over the weekend, the Europeans agreed to that language, provided the preamble of the declaration made reference to "other guidelines" on HIV that have previously been laid out by UNAIDS and other agencies. Those guidelines infuriated the OIC, which, sources said, made photocopied magnifications of selected passages that referred to gay marriages, consensual sex with teenagers and assisting intravenous drug users. One person present said that even most county governments in the United States would refuse to legalize such things. None of the Islamic states could possibly reconcile that language with their legal and religious systems, the source said.

After the Monday breakdown in the General Assembly, the preamble clause became the focus of negotiations, and finally at 5 p.m. yesterday the Europeans backed down and agreed to drop the preamble. In exchange, all parties agreed to a tough clause regarding women's rights, which calls upon nations to, by 2005, "promote the advancement of women and women's full enjoyment of all human rights; promote shared responsibility of men and women to ensure safe sex; empower women to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality to increase their ability to protect themselves from HIV infection."

Obaid, who is a Saudi woman, was beaming over that clause. She described it as the result of years of struggle inside the UN over women's rights, "and this is just the result of a natural process of years of putting women further forward. In some African countries, for every man, there are five women who are infected. And in some countries women have no access to health care, to education, to employment, so they become ever more vulnerable" to HIV, Obaid said.

But the Europeans were still smarting yesterday afternoon. Denmark's Minister for Development Cooperation Anita Bay Bundegaard told the General Assembly in a speech that "we are disappointed by the continuing controversy surrounding human rights of girls and women. Inequitable gender relations and opportunities lie at the very heart of the HIV/AIDS pandemic."

Iran's Deputy Minister of Health and Medical Education Ali-Akbar Sayyari issued, from the OIC perspective, a contrary public castigation: "In so far as sexual relations are concerned, from our point of view, the imperative of moral choice and behavior, the centrality of the family as the basic unit of society and responsible individual conduct are indispensable to the healthy state of relations in any society."

Obaid shrugged. "Maybe some people are disappointed with the results. But the result is an indication of the will of all of the countries to come together in a very positive way. This is the height of cultural dialogue. Now HIV is out in the open. There is no silence any more. Nobody can deny it any more. The genie has come out of the bottle and you cannot put it back in. And that is the victory."

Meanwhile, U.S. congressional leaders agreed to add more than $1.3 billion to a global campaign against AIDS yesterday, a day after Secretary of State Colin Powell pledged more American money to fight the killer disease. The plan was expected to be signed by President George W. Bush. b
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