United Press International - December 7, 2000
William M. Reilly

Speaking at the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa's "African Development Forum 2000," he said, "The world is at last beginning to respond to this crisis in a way that measures up to it."

Some 1,500 delegates gathered for the session dubbed, "AIDS: The Greatest Leadership Challenge." It was organized by the commission in conjunction with UNAIDS and co-sponsored by U.N. agencies, the World Bank and other partners to challenge African leadership to take action.

"We can halt the spread of AIDS. We can reverse it," Annan told a packed conference room in the sleek, modern U. N. Conference Center.

For the world organization's part, he said, "We have opened a dialogue with the pharmaceutical industry. We are promoting transparency on prices. We are supporting preferential pricing on drugs for developing countries."

The secretary-general said it was part of a broader, coordinated strategy to strengthen health services.

"AIDS leaves poor societies poorer still and thus even more vulnerable to infection," he said. "It has become a leading obstacle to overcoming poverty. And it is increasingly recognized as a security issue for the threats its consequences could pose to political stability, especially in already troubled societies."

The secretary-general recalled that former South African President Nelson Mandela once said that AIDS kills those on whom society relies to grow the crops, work in the mines and the factories, run the schools and govern.

Annan said the world has begun to heed the call for billions of dollars in assistance, "rather than millions," to be spent on AIDS in Africa. But, he said, "It is the local people who bear the greatest burden."

In that respect, Annan said it is the women who are leading the way in a "counter-attack of care, counseling and compassion."

The secretary-general also praised "women's empowerment" as a key strategy for decreasing vulnerability to the disease, but added, men also can make a difference.

"When we talk about men and AIDS, we think only of men who refuse to use condoms, men's relations outside marriage or harmful concepts of masculinity," he said. "This view is too limited."

Saluting the national leaders who attended the session, Annan said, "They understand that official recognition of the problem is the first step towards dealing with it."

He said they showed that "the leadership we need in Africa cannot come from outside, but rather must flow from within."

Botswana President Festus Mogae told the conference that attendees must agree on how "the poorest of the world's continents, representing only 5 percent of the world's productive human capital, having limited access to 3 percent of its financial resources, can meet the HIV/AIDS multibillion-dollar challenge. We are called to respond to a supreme test of our commitment as African leaders to our people."

Uganda's President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni called Africa's AIDS crisis "the worst misfortune" to hit the continent in the 20th century."

"Although the visitation was worldwide, sub-Saharan Africa, with 10 percent of the world's population, accounts for 24.5 million people or 17 percent out of the 34.3 million people in the world estimated to be living with HIV," he said. "Out of the 18.8 million people who have died of AIDS, 14 million of them have died in Sub-Saharan Africa. Out of the 13.2 million children who have been orphaned by AIDS, 12 million are in sub-Saharan Africa."

The secretary-general said the international community can learn from this AIDS meeting because "there are many areas where it is spreading at an alarming rate and where the wall of silence is standing in the way of struggle."

He mentioned India, Eastern Europe and the Russia as where "we have seen an extraordinary rise in HIV infections.

Annan warned that if action isn't taken in those regions, "they could end up facing a crisis comparable to what we already see in many parts of Africa."

A native of Ghana, Annan said, "I stand before you as a fellow African. We know that we came too late to this tragedy. Far too many graves accumulated in Africa as the years passed and energies were not yet fully mobilized. I also know that as secretary-general of the United Nations, that the response has also been painfully slow in the great multilateral community.

"But, finally, we are galvanized," he said. "When history writes of the moment this was seized, let them look back at this ADF 2000 and say, 'This is where the breakthrough occurred.'"

Bilateral meetings with African leaders were interspersed throughout his two-day visit to Addis Ababa and continued after his address at the AIDS forum. Annan also visited U.N. agency projects and was a guest at an Ethiopian government lunch.

Friday, after a news conference, Annan was to fly to Asmara, opening an air route to the Eritrean capital for the first time since war between the two neighbors began two years ago. He was expected to attend Tuesday's signing of a peace agreement between the two in Algiers.
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