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World AIDS Day Report 2011 by Michel Sidibé Executive Director of UNAIDS Nov 21, 2011 The 2011 report by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), shows that new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths have fallen to the lowest levels since the peak of the epidemic. New HIV infections were reduced by 21% since 1997, and deaths from AIDS-related illnesses decreased by 21% since 2005. “Even in a difficult financial crisis, countries are still delivering results in the AIDS response.” said Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS. “We have seen a scale up in access to HIV treatment which has had a dramatic effect on the lives of people.” According to UNAIDS and WHO estimates, 47% (6.6 million) of the estimated 14.2 million people eligible for treatment in low- and middle-income countries were accessing lifesaving antiretroviral therapy in 2010, an increase of 1.35 million since 2009. The 2011 UNAIDS World AIDS Day report also highlights that there are early signs that HIV treatment is having a significant impact on reducing the number of new HIV infections. In Botswana, the country scaled up access to treatment from less than 5% in 2000 to over 80% which it has maintained since 2009. The annual number of new HIV infections has declined by over two thirds since the late nineties and data suggests that the number of new HIV infections in Botswana is 30% to 50% lower today than it would have been in the absence of antiretroviral therapy. Treatment reduces the risk of transmitting the virus to an uninfected partner. Recent studies show that treatment can be up to 96% effective in preventing HIV transmission among couples. At the end of 2010 an estimated: 34 million people were globally living with HIV, there were 2.7 million new HIV infections in 2010, and 1.8 million people died of AIDS-related illnesses in 2010. Treatment has averted 2.5 million deaths since 1995. People living with HIV are living longer and AIDS-related deaths are declining due to the lifesaving effects of antiretroviral therapy. New HIV infections have been reduced or have stabilized in most parts of the world. In sub-Saharan Africa the number of new HIV infections has dropped by more than 26%, from the height of the epidemic in 1997, led by a one third drop in South Africa, the country with the largest number of new HIV infections in the world. In India new HIV infections fell by 56%. However, the number of new HIV infections continues to rise in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Oceania and Middle-East and North Africa, while it has remained stable in other regions of the world. HIV prevalence declined among young people in at least 21 of 24 countries with national HIV prevalence of 1% or higher. Five additional countries, Burkina Faso, Congo, Ghana, Nigeria, and Togo have seen HIV prevalence decline by more than 25% between 2001 and 2010 among young people. UNAIDS has mapped a new framework for AIDS investments which are focused on high-impact, evidence-based, high-value strategies. "The investment framework is community driven not commodity driven. It puts people at the centre of the approach, not the virus," said Mr Sidibé. This new strategic approach to investments would achieve extraordinary results; at least 12.2 million new HIV infections would be averted, including 1.9 million among children between 2011 and 2020; and 7.4 million AIDS-related deaths would be averted between 2011 and 2020. Donor funding has been reduced by 10% from US$ 7.6 billion in 2009 to US$ 6.9 billion in 2010. In a difficult economic climate the future of AIDS resourcing depends on smart investments. To rapidly reduce new HIV infections and to save lives, the 2011 UNAIDS World AIDS Day report underscores that shared responsibility is needed. Visit the related web page |
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Sri Lanka’s North: The Denial of Minority Rights by International Crisis Group Deepening militarisation and the lack of accountable governance in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province are preventing a return to normal life and threaten future violence. Scene of the most bitter fighting in the civil war, the Tamil-majority north remains under de facto military occupation, with all important policies set by Sinhala officials in Colombo. The slow but undeniable movement of Sinhala settlers into the fringes of the north and other forms of government-supported “Sinhalisation” are reigniting a sense of grievance and weakening chances for a real settlement with Tamil and other minority parties to devolve power. The international community, especially those governments and aid agencies supporting the reconstruction of the area, should demand a fundamental change of course and should structure their assistance so as to encourage the demilitarisation and democratisation of the former war zone and full respect for minority rights. With the massive number of troops in the north have come various forms of Sinhalisation. The almost entirely Tamil-speaking north is now dotted with Sinhala sign-boards, streets newly renamed in Sinhala, monuments to Sinhala war heroes, and even a war museum and battlefields that are open only to Sinhalese. Sinhala fishermen and businessmen are regularly given advantages not accorded to Tamils. The slow but steady movement of Sinhala settlers along the southern edges of the province, often with military and central government support and sometimes onto land previously farmed or occupied by Tamils, is particularly worrying. These developments are consistent with a strategy – known to be supported by important officials and advisers to the president – to change “the facts on the ground”, as has already happened in the east, and make it impossible to claim the north as a Tamil-majority area deserving of self-governance. The Northern Province has been at the centre of a half-century of ethnic conflict. Comprising the Jaffna peninsula and the Vanni region, the latter largely controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from the 1990s until 2009, the province bore the brunt of the 25 years of war that came to a bloody end in May 2009, with up to 40,000 civilians killed and the military defeat of the LTTE. The north constitutes the core of the homeland claimed by Tamil nationalists and fought for by the guerrilla. Tamil demands for self-rule in the north (together with the now multi-ethnic east) have been bitterly contested by many Sinhalese; the failure to grant regional autonomy gave birth to demands for a separate state and led to civil war. While the conflict continued, large portions of the north functioned as a refuge for Tamils fleeing violence and discrimination in Sinhala-majority areas in the south, while also putting them under the control of the totalitarian LTTE. Some 75,000 Tamil-speaking Muslims expelled from the north by the movement in 1990 – now grown to as many as 200,000 – remain displaced from their homes and lands. Deepening militarisation of the province presents a threat to long-term peace and stability. Far in excess of any legitimate need to protect against an LTTE revival, the militarisation of the north is generating widespread fear and anger among Tamils: indeed, the strategy being executed runs the risk of inadvertently resurrecting what it seeks to crush once and for all – the possibility of violent Tamil insurrection. The construction of large and permanent military cantonments, the growing involvement of the military in agricultural and commercial activities, the seizure of large amounts of private and state land, and the army’s role in determining reconstruction priorities are all serious concerns. They are discussed in a companion report, Sri Lanka’s North II: Rebuilding under the Military. This report examines how effective military control over the civil administration as well as control and surveillance of civil society, along with government-supported Sinhalisation, has undermined many of the expected benefits from an end to the war. Enforced disappearances, violent crackdowns on protestors in various towns and extrajudicial punishments have shown the sharper edge of military policing and revealed the deep mistrust on both sides of the civil-military and Tamil-Sinhala divides. Continued Sinhalisation and militarisation of the north threaten to render pointless the stalled negotiations on devolution between the government and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the clear favourite among Tamil voters in the north after victories in parliamentary and local government elections. Despite strong pressure from the Indian and U.S. governments, the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa shows little inclination to offer any tangible devolution of power to the north (or the multi-ethnic east); even the limited powers legally devolved to provincial councils under the current constitution are not in practice shared. In the absence of a functioning provincial council – despite repeated government promises of early elections – the north is ruled directly by the governor, a retired general and presidential appointee. However important devolution of power ultimately will be, the longer current policies are allowed to remain in place, the harder it will be to achieve meaningful power-sharing with a Tamil-majority north. Government-TNA negotiations and international pressure should therefore focus first on the demilitarisation of the province, the reestablishment of civilian and democratic governance, and an end to any government-supported Sinhalisation. The government can begin on this agenda by implementing the many sensible recommendations of its own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission and demonstrate its commitment by presenting a concrete roadmap for reconciliation and democratisation. Donors and development agencies can support these changes by speaking out clearly about the lack of democratic conditions in the north and by insisting that their programs be developed in consultation with local communities and leaders and implemented by an autonomous civil administration. Visit the related web page |
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