United Nations Chief Calls on Russian Society to Fight Child Homelessness, AIDS

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Wednesday urged Russian society as a whole to mobilize to overcome the country's devastating child homelessness and AIDS problems. Addressing a gathering of Russian non-governmental organizations in Moscow, Annan said it was "clear that the whole of society must get involved to resolve these problems: politicians, educators and also businessmen."

Russia has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world, and medical experts believe that up to 95 percent of new infections are caused by the sharing of unsterilized syringes among drug addicts. The official figure of 182,000 cases of HIV is widely regarded as a huge underestimate, with the true figure as much as 10 times greater.

According to Moscow's Center for Homeless Children, more than 1 million children are living on the street in Russia, including 33,000 in Moscow alone. Oleg Zykov of the organization No to Alcohol and Drugs said the problem of child homelessness was linked to that of AIDS. "Because if we don't help these children, they often seek refuge in drugs and are liable to pick up the AIDS virus," he said.

The collapse of large sectors of Russia's economy and welfare structures in the 1990s, exacerbated by unemployment and alcoholism, led to a significant loosening of family ties and a massive upsurge in what experts are calling "social orphanhood" -- the abandoning of children by parents unable to cope. Russian authorities began to tackle the problem of abandoned children following President Vladimir Putin's call for urgent measures against what he said was an issue of alarming proportions.

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