Africa's AIDS Activists Question Value of UN Conference

The UN summit on AIDS and its resulting Declaration of Commitment are being met with skepticism in Africa, the continent worst affected by the pandemic. "I am tired of lip service," said Koketso Rantona, chair of the Botswana Network of AIDS Service Organizations. The declaration sets deadlines for governments to increase access to AIDS drugs, set up prevention programs, and reduce the number of infants with HIV.

But while participants were promising to empower women to fight HIV/AIDS, Rantona's Society for Women Against AIDS continues its struggle to survive. Its funding ran out last year; Rantona's office is a trailer; and she cannot even afford to travel to villages to educate people about the disease. "People should stop talking and give us practical support. Communities are in need, they are impoverished, they are sick," she said.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for a world fund with $7 billion to $10 billion for fighting AIDS each year. Yet the conference ended with only $700 million committed (although a key US Congressional committee has approved an additional $750 million). "With the amount of money that's there at the moment they can't [offer treatment] or they can do it on a very small scale," said Nathan Geffen of South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign. He said the biggest success of the week was the withdrawal of a US complaint, filed with the World Trade Organization, over the law Brazil uses to keep down the cost of AIDS drugs.

And at the very least, the declaration will allow activists to hold governments morally accountable, said Thanduxolo Doro, program manager for South Africa's National Association of People Living with AIDS. Activists plan to "keep on reminding, becoming a pain in their necks: 'Remember the UN summit. Remember the UN summit,'" he said.

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