NEPAD criticised for not focusing on HIV/AIDS

Stephen Lewis, the UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS, last week criticised the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) for its modest references to HIV/AIDS.

Speaking at the opening of the People's Summit, an alternative to the G-8 Summit taking place this week, he said: "How can you talk about the future of sub-Saharan Africa without AIDS at the heart of the analysis?"

Africa's development goals would remain an "impossible hope" until the HIV/AIDS pandemic was addressed, despite initiatives such as NEPAD, he warned.

NEPAD - a proposal by African leaders in which the continent promises to adopt good governance and open up its markets in return for aid and investment from developed countries - had "a number of stunning goals" which would be doomed unless it addressed HIV/AIDS, Lewis said.

There would be no cutting poverty in half by the year 2015 and with 2,000 infants a day currently infected, there would be no reduction in infant mortality by two-thirds, unless the pandemic was defeated.

Promoting education was futile when teachers were dying and girls were removed from school to care for orphaned brothers and sisters. It was obvious that the development process in developing countries had been "dealt a mortal blow" by HIV/AIDS, he added.

"I privately wish that the African leadership had openly confronted the G8 on the issue of AIDS, rather than muting its impact within NEPAD."

The G8 Summit would be the last best chance for Africa, Lewis noted.

"If the G8 Summit takes NEPAD seriously, if it wishes to make development more than an 'impossible dream' ... then it will provide a guarantee, year by year, of the monies that Kofi Annan has requested for the Global [AIDS] Fund. In one fell swoop, the entire summit would then be credible," he said.

Lewis expressed his disappointment that wealthy nations had only contributed US $2.1 billion dollars over three years to the Global Fund.

"It's a shocking piece of international financial delinquency, and it's a shocking rejection of Africa".

He also called for the G8 leaders to respond on a human level and not on an intellectual and academic level.

Using the metaphor of war, Lewis asked: "Why is the war against terrorism sacrosanct, and the war against AIDS equivocal?"