Greens agree with groups like Doctors Without Borders, Health Global Access Project (GAP), and ACT UP Philadelphia and New York on measures urgently necessary to stop the spread of AIDS, as well as tuberculosis and other diseases:

*** The U.S. and international institutions such as the World Bank and IMF must forgive the debt of nations in Africa, South America, and Asia which need tremendous financial resources to prevent AIDS and deliver treatments. "Structural adjustment" forced on developing nations by these institutions has caused misery and environmental destruction in the name of global corporate power -- the same power that limits access to medicine. U.S. loans to the World Bank and IMF must be conditional on debt forgiveness and on the provision of health care, as well as on human rights and labor rights records and environmental impact statements.

*** U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has proposed a Global AIDS and Health Fund; his call for $7-10 billion from wealthy nations would jumpstart this project. UNAIDS senior policy officer Julia Celeves says only about 1.8 billion dollars is currently spent on AIDS annually -- between 5.2 billion and 8.2 billion less than what is necessary.

*** All countries must be allowed to develop generic drugs and shop comparatively on the international market for the lowest prices in order to get AIDS drugs to their people. Even the lowest name-brand prices are three times the price of the kind of dollar-a-day generic drugs offered by the Indian firm Cipla. Brazil's generic drug program, instituted in defiance of the U.S. (which tends to side with drug lobbies), has been a model for other developing nations. (ASGP passed a resolution on AIDS drug pricing in 1999 in reaction to Vice President Al Gore's role in penalizing South Africa for making low-cost AIDS drugs available.)

*** Drug companies must not wield control over the administration of AIDS funding internationally or in the U.S. and must not be placed in positions of power to determine AIDS policy.

*** Stigmatizing gay people and other sexual minorities, single mothers, ethnic minorities, sexually active teens, prostitutes, drug users, prison inmates, etc. will not slow the spread of HIV, but will increase the epidemic by driving people and sexual practices underground, by exacerbating ignorance and denial, and by shutting people out of treatment.

*** Women -- who make up the great majority of AIDS cases in Africa -- must be given complete power to govern their lives and their reproductive capacities: information on HIV prevention, access to contraception and abortion, and access to medical treatment. This is called sexual equality, and the Green Party supports it.

George W. Bush's AIDS policies, say Greens, emphasize regressive and ineffectual tactics: exclusive teaching of abstinence, alienation of people outside of traditional families, opposition to protections for gay and lesbian people and other sexual minorities, lack of concern for women's rights, inappropriate promotion of religion, and the doctrine that corporate lobbies should dictate public policy.

The Bush Administration objected to one proposed clause in the U.N. declaration because "for legal and constitutional reasons, the United States cannot accept a 'rights based approach' to HIV/AIDS -- any more than it can accept a rights based approach to food, shelter, or hunger." Furthermore, the U.S. delegation allegedly pressed for the change of emphasis in the declaration from criticism of the intellectual property rights and patents of drug companies to the much weaker "strengthening pharmaceutical policies and practices... in order further to promote innovation."

The administration's ignorance and racial insensitivity are typified by a statement from USAID director Andrew Natsios, who said Africans should not receive AIDS medicines because they "don't know what Western time is." Mr. Natsios later apologized, but the stench of the remark lingers.

Such actions reveal that the White House is more devoted to pharmaceutical lobbies than to the needs of the world's sick. The U.S. was also the only country that voted nay on a recent U.N. High Commission on Human Rights resolution demanding access to AIDS medication for all who need it.

Religious conservatives from some nations blocked Karyn Kaplan of International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission from participating in a roundtable discussion during the U.N. meeting. Libyan ambassador Abuzed Omar Dorda told the General Assembly: "Homosexuality is one of the main causes of this disease. In fact, God sent the prophet Lot with a clear message preventing such practices and banning them." Zambia's Roman Catholic Church denounced detailed information on AIDS prevention for promoting "moral decay."

These forces conspired with the U.S. government to compromise the final version of the U.N. declaration and succeeded in cutting out mention of populations, such as homosexuals and prostitutes, at greatest risk of infection.

MORE INFORMATION:

The Association of State Green Parties
http://www.greenparties.org

U.N. Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS
http://www.un.org/ga/aids/coverage/FinalDeclarationHIVAIDS.html

Health Global Access Project (GAP)
http://aids.org/healthgap/

ACT UP Philadelphia http://www.critpath.org/actup/

Doctors Without Borders http://www.msf.org/

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