USIA Washington File - December 1, 1999
Judy Aita, Washington File United Nations Correspondent
The U.S. first lady was one of more than 20 people -- from AIDS workers to celebrities to AIDS orphans -- who participated in a daylong symposium on children orphaned by AIDS in observance of World AIDS Day December 1. It coincided with the release of a new report by UNICEF (the United Nations Children's Fund) and UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS) on the more than 11 million children orphaned by AIDS.
Mrs. Clinton said that the immense potential of those 11 million children can be "unlocked and nurtured or wasted and ignored."
"I call upon all countries, all leaders, all businesses, all families, all citizens to take responsibility for these children and to ensure that the disease that robbed them of their mothers and fathers does not continue to lay waste to their futures," she said.
"Together we have to recognize that we are indeed a global village and that the battle against AIDS in America, in Africa, in Asia, around the world is a shared responsibility," Mrs. Clinton said.
"Much has been written and said about what we need to do to turn the tide, but it is long past time to move from talk to action. Together we can move from denial to recognition, from fixing blame to taking responsibility, from despair to hope," she said.
By the year 2010, according to the UNICEF/UNAIDS report, 40 million children will be orphaned by AIDS. "In sub-Saharan Africa that means one in five children will be orphaned by AIDS ... Children will be sent to already overburdened relatives or wind up on the streets living from meal to meal with no opportunities for work, much less schooling," Mrs. Clinton said.
"For these children the journey from childhood to adulthood -- which has already been painful enough with the loss of a parent -- has become a harrowing journey from near poverty to complete destitution, from limited prospects to none at all," she said. "They are the children of a lost generation and it is up to us to ensure that we do not lose them as well."
Describing AIDS as "a plague of biblical proportions," Mrs. Clinton said that over the next decade AIDS will kill more people in sub-Saharan Africa than the total number killed in all the wars of the 20th century. In less than two decades AIDS has claimed 16 million lives around the world and today 33 million people are living with HIV or AIDS.
Every five seconds another man, woman, or child will become HIV-positive, and in just five years 100 million people will have been infected by the HIV virus, she said.
"Never become numb to the statistics or to the people they represent," Mrs. Clinton warned.
Also on the panel with Mrs. Clinton were three teenagers from the United States, Thailand, and Uganda who are separated by thousands of kilometers and different cultures, but are painfully close in the experience of losing both parents to AIDS.
Paris Lane, a 17-year-old from New York City, talked about how he did not know what AIDS was when his father died of the disease when Paris was 11, but he did know the despair and loneliness when his mother died two years later.
"I lost all faith in everything. I could not understand why God would take someone away who was trying to make right of their wrongs," Paris said. " I attempted to hurt myself as well as others. I dropped out of school, experimented with drugs, and never gave a thought to how my mother's death affected my brothers and sisters."
One day he began to cry and realized that "I was proving everyone right," he said. "The way I was going I would end up in a cell or a casket." It was no way to honor his mother's efforts.
Paris is now living with another family and will soon be adopted. He has honor status in high school, plays basketball and chess, and is looking forward to college and a career in criminal justice.
"There's life for children whose parents who have died from AIDS, and I am living proof," he said.
Andrew Jackson Okurut, a 13-year-old from Uganda, reminded the symposium that he is "one of the million orphans from Africa who have lost parents due to AIDS."
"Because of AIDS I have lived a fatherless life, having lost my father when I was five months old. I have no idea what my father looked like, what his voice or footsteps sounded like. People tell me I resemble my father -- I just have to believe them," Andrew said.
"I knew my mother had AIDS, but I did not believe she would die," he continued. "On 21 of September darkness struck my life: my mother died, leaving us helpless. I live without the love of my parents. ... I feel very lonely most of the time, as I miss my mother and father.
"I am uncertain about continuation in school and my future. I am uncertain about my home, as we have to leave the government house we lived in with my mother," Andrew said. He noted that he and his siblings are being supported by a local AIDS foundation, an aunt who looks in on them twice a week, and the Ugandan coalition of women living with AIDS who helped his mother.
The coalition helped him compile his family history, which he brought to the United Nations to share with those who were interested. It also guided his mother in writing her will, a protection for her children.
"I wish to make an important call today," Andrew said. "The governments of the world need to recognize the special needs of AIDS orphans ... including education, food, shelter, clothing. ... Our voices are small, so help us to blow the whistle and listen."
Mrs. Clinton said that no government or local group can respond to what the children have challenged alone. "Restoring hope, taking responsibility for these children, fighting AIDS will require the leadership and concerted effort of all of us, working together," she said.
She said that she and President Clinton will again this year invite business and religious leaders to the White House to share their experiences in the fight against AIDS and to encourage them to do even more.
"The children deserve the attention and leadership of those serving at the highest levels of government," Mrs. Clinton also said. "This is not just the concern of health ministers. It must be the concern of finance ministers, labor ministers, prime ministers, and presidents. AIDS is taking a toll on all sectors of society."
"AIDS is not simply a health emergency, it is an international crisis. We need more political leaders to break the conspiracy of silence about AIDS," she said.
"Leaders must use the bully pulpit and government action not only to treat the disease but to change attitudes. We need political leaders to help erase the stigma that keeps too many people with AIDS from seeking treatment and we must fight the ignorance that fosters the spread of this disease," the first lady said.
Describing Uganda's AIDS programs, especially those that teach Ugandans about AIDS and how to prevent it, Mrs. Clinton said that "it is truly an impressive effort and it is paying off." She urged other countries, not only in Africa abut in Asia and Latin America, to look to Uganda as an example of what can be done through concerned government action.
According to a recently released U.N. report on HIV/AIDS, despite the potent new medicines, growing public awareness, and government health campaigns, 2.6 million people died this year from HIV/AIDS, the highest global total since the epidemic's outbreak in the late 1970s.
The report said that there will be 5.6 million new infections in 1999 and experts fear that AIDS-related deaths will continue to rise for years.
According to the report "AIDS Epidemic Update: December 1999," HIV/AIDS is increasingly concentrated among the young. Half of all the people who acquire HIV become infected before they are 25 and often die from AIDS before they reach 35.
In the UNICEF/UNAIDS report on sub-Saharan Africa, the agencies say that the number of children orphaned by AIDS is skyrocketing and the traditional African extended family is breaking down under the unprecedented burden of the pandemic. By the end of 1999, there will be 11.2 million children orphaned by AIDS, 95 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
"The scale of the orphan crisis is almost unimaginable, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said. "Before AIDS, about 2 percent of all children in developing countries were orphans. By 1997, the figure had jumped to 7 percent in many African countries -- in some countries the figures run as high as 11 percent."
The number of orphans, Bellamy pointed out, puts a severe strain on traditional support systems in Africa. "The grandparents who in so many cases are taking care of their orphaned grandchildren have limited resources. They cannot keep this up forever," she said.
(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State.)
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