An ambitious plan to curb extreme poverty and promote gender equality in the next decade will not get off the ground unless governments in the world's least developed countries put the HIV/AIDS pandemic at the top of their agendas, said U.N. experts yesterday. This means aggressively pursuing policies that promote women's empowerment and fight discrimination against people living with the disease, according to a new report titled ”Hope: Building Capacity: Least Developed Countries Meet the HIV/AIDS Challenge.” The project is a joint venture between the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS). ”It is imperative that we continue to stay focused on this challenge, as we aspire to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and the goals of the Brussels Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries,” said Anwarul Chowdhury, the under-secretary-general for UN-OHRLLS, who chaired yesterday's event. ”Least developed” countries have a per capita gross domestic product of 750 dollars or less, and a low ranking on scales that measure quality of life and economic vulnerability. Fifty countries fit these criteria, most in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Hope project marks an effort to address the devastation wrought by HIV/AIDS, and specifically how the disease is undermining the ability of LDCs to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by their 2015 deadline. The MDGs include a 50 percent reduction in poverty and hunger; universal primary education; reduction of child mortality by two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; the promotion of gender equality; and the reversal of the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. ”Half measures are not enough,” said Desmond Johns, director of UNAIDS. ”Addressing AIDS is the key to” addressing the other MDGs. As Nafis Sadik, special representative of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on HIV/AIDS in Asia, pointed out, gender equality in the LDCs -- 13 of which are in Asia -- is currently ”far down on the agenda.” In countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Cambodia, poor women outnumber poor men, and most have no access to any form of sex education. ”Less educated girls and young women are less able to protect themselves against becoming HIV-positive, fuelling a vicious cycle where gender disparities further contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS,” the report warns. In addition to expanding educational opportunities, extending microcredits -- small loans that stimulate local business -- to rural women would also empower them, Sadik said. ”Women fight for their rights,” she said, ”but will their governments support them?” Sometimes one or both heads of household succumb to AIDS and their children become the sole breadwinners, thereby compromising the goal of universal primary schooling for children, especially girls. The project describes a ”capacity challenge” in LDCs -- a ”weakened institutional capacity for management and delivery of services” as a result of the AIDS pandemic. ”AIDS causes between 19 and 53 percent of all government health employee deaths in Africa,” where 36 of the LDCs are located, according to the report. In many poor countries, it is the ”pillars of society” who are first affected by and lost to AIDS, crippling the ability for governments to respond to each successive wave of HIV infection. Another factor weakening health care in LDCs is the ”brain drain” occurring in countries like Zambia, for example, which lost 550 doctors since its independence in 1964. According to ”Hope,” ”The consequent challenge to economic development is the issue of loss of man power, expertise and skills to more developed countries.” One solution is to find a way to improve job benefits and satisfaction in an effort to keep skilled health care workers within LDC borders. The migratory work patterns of African miners exacerbate long-distance infection, as they are ”two and a half times more likely to be positive than non-migrant workers.” The report pushes for policies that allow miners to move around with their families as a way to curb infection. Johns acknowledged that some LDCs show a relatively low prevalence of HIV/AIDS infection. ”If we act now,” he said, ”we can maintain” this low prevalence -- most importantly through prevention among young people, a factor that was stressed repeatedly by the panel members. The fastest rate of HIV infection occurs among 15-24 year olds, according to the report. Silence is another major obstacle to meeting the MDGs. Maria Ndhlovu, a ”We Care” adviser and HIV/AIDS activist from South Africa, told a harrowing tale of being raped while her child slept on a nearby couch, an attack that led to her diagnosis with HIV. Ndhlovu described how she felt stigmatised but had no one to talk to about her HIV status. On the advice of her doctor she went to a hospital support group where, to her surprise, she found people of all races and cultures. But the stigmatisation ran so deep that participants were arranged on chairs set up back to back, facing away from each other. ”We need access to counseling,” she urged. ”We need to break the silence.” Sadik also linked the practice of arranged marriage to HIV infection on the Indian subcontinent, where many women are joined with men who are unknowingly infected with the virus. In many of these countries, marriage laws legally sanction violence against married women by their husbands, effectively silencing victims of abuse. According to the UNDP, 30 percent of people in Asia living with HIV are women, but only five percent receive the vital anti-retroviral therapy that extends life. Increased political participation can move these issues to the forefront, Sadik argued. For Chowdhury, the dilemma is also fundamentally economic. According to the UN-OHRLL, LDCs paid a combined 5.1 billion dollars in debt servicing payments. In countries like Senegal and Malawi, debt absorbs 30 percent of public income. ”It is a critical challenge for these countries as they are forced to choose between servicing their debts and investing in health and education and tackling poverty and HIV/AIDS,” he said.
Friday, February 25, 2005
[Global Poverty] Breaking the Vicious Circle of Sexism, Poverty and AIDS
By Jennifer Mascia UNITED NATIONS, Feb 25 (IPS) -
An ambitious plan to curb extreme poverty and promote gender equality in the next decade will not get off the ground unless governments in the world's least developed countries put the HIV/AIDS pandemic at the top of their agendas, said U.N. experts yesterday. This means aggressively pursuing policies that promote women's empowerment and fight discrimination against people living with the disease, according to a new report titled ”Hope: Building Capacity: Least Developed Countries Meet the HIV/AIDS Challenge.” The project is a joint venture between the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS). ”It is imperative that we continue to stay focused on this challenge, as we aspire to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and the goals of the Brussels Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries,” said Anwarul Chowdhury, the under-secretary-general for UN-OHRLLS, who chaired yesterday's event. ”Least developed” countries have a per capita gross domestic product of 750 dollars or less, and a low ranking on scales that measure quality of life and economic vulnerability. Fifty countries fit these criteria, most in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Hope project marks an effort to address the devastation wrought by HIV/AIDS, and specifically how the disease is undermining the ability of LDCs to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by their 2015 deadline. The MDGs include a 50 percent reduction in poverty and hunger; universal primary education; reduction of child mortality by two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; the promotion of gender equality; and the reversal of the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. ”Half measures are not enough,” said Desmond Johns, director of UNAIDS. ”Addressing AIDS is the key to” addressing the other MDGs. As Nafis Sadik, special representative of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on HIV/AIDS in Asia, pointed out, gender equality in the LDCs -- 13 of which are in Asia -- is currently ”far down on the agenda.” In countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Cambodia, poor women outnumber poor men, and most have no access to any form of sex education. ”Less educated girls and young women are less able to protect themselves against becoming HIV-positive, fuelling a vicious cycle where gender disparities further contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS,” the report warns. In addition to expanding educational opportunities, extending microcredits -- small loans that stimulate local business -- to rural women would also empower them, Sadik said. ”Women fight for their rights,” she said, ”but will their governments support them?” Sometimes one or both heads of household succumb to AIDS and their children become the sole breadwinners, thereby compromising the goal of universal primary schooling for children, especially girls. The project describes a ”capacity challenge” in LDCs -- a ”weakened institutional capacity for management and delivery of services” as a result of the AIDS pandemic. ”AIDS causes between 19 and 53 percent of all government health employee deaths in Africa,” where 36 of the LDCs are located, according to the report. In many poor countries, it is the ”pillars of society” who are first affected by and lost to AIDS, crippling the ability for governments to respond to each successive wave of HIV infection. Another factor weakening health care in LDCs is the ”brain drain” occurring in countries like Zambia, for example, which lost 550 doctors since its independence in 1964. According to ”Hope,” ”The consequent challenge to economic development is the issue of loss of man power, expertise and skills to more developed countries.” One solution is to find a way to improve job benefits and satisfaction in an effort to keep skilled health care workers within LDC borders. The migratory work patterns of African miners exacerbate long-distance infection, as they are ”two and a half times more likely to be positive than non-migrant workers.” The report pushes for policies that allow miners to move around with their families as a way to curb infection. Johns acknowledged that some LDCs show a relatively low prevalence of HIV/AIDS infection. ”If we act now,” he said, ”we can maintain” this low prevalence -- most importantly through prevention among young people, a factor that was stressed repeatedly by the panel members. The fastest rate of HIV infection occurs among 15-24 year olds, according to the report. Silence is another major obstacle to meeting the MDGs. Maria Ndhlovu, a ”We Care” adviser and HIV/AIDS activist from South Africa, told a harrowing tale of being raped while her child slept on a nearby couch, an attack that led to her diagnosis with HIV. Ndhlovu described how she felt stigmatised but had no one to talk to about her HIV status. On the advice of her doctor she went to a hospital support group where, to her surprise, she found people of all races and cultures. But the stigmatisation ran so deep that participants were arranged on chairs set up back to back, facing away from each other. ”We need access to counseling,” she urged. ”We need to break the silence.” Sadik also linked the practice of arranged marriage to HIV infection on the Indian subcontinent, where many women are joined with men who are unknowingly infected with the virus. In many of these countries, marriage laws legally sanction violence against married women by their husbands, effectively silencing victims of abuse. According to the UNDP, 30 percent of people in Asia living with HIV are women, but only five percent receive the vital anti-retroviral therapy that extends life. Increased political participation can move these issues to the forefront, Sadik argued. For Chowdhury, the dilemma is also fundamentally economic. According to the UN-OHRLL, LDCs paid a combined 5.1 billion dollars in debt servicing payments. In countries like Senegal and Malawi, debt absorbs 30 percent of public income. ”It is a critical challenge for these countries as they are forced to choose between servicing their debts and investing in health and education and tackling poverty and HIV/AIDS,” he said.
An ambitious plan to curb extreme poverty and promote gender equality in the next decade will not get off the ground unless governments in the world's least developed countries put the HIV/AIDS pandemic at the top of their agendas, said U.N. experts yesterday. This means aggressively pursuing policies that promote women's empowerment and fight discrimination against people living with the disease, according to a new report titled ”Hope: Building Capacity: Least Developed Countries Meet the HIV/AIDS Challenge.” The project is a joint venture between the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS). ”It is imperative that we continue to stay focused on this challenge, as we aspire to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and the goals of the Brussels Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries,” said Anwarul Chowdhury, the under-secretary-general for UN-OHRLLS, who chaired yesterday's event. ”Least developed” countries have a per capita gross domestic product of 750 dollars or less, and a low ranking on scales that measure quality of life and economic vulnerability. Fifty countries fit these criteria, most in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Hope project marks an effort to address the devastation wrought by HIV/AIDS, and specifically how the disease is undermining the ability of LDCs to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by their 2015 deadline. The MDGs include a 50 percent reduction in poverty and hunger; universal primary education; reduction of child mortality by two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; the promotion of gender equality; and the reversal of the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. ”Half measures are not enough,” said Desmond Johns, director of UNAIDS. ”Addressing AIDS is the key to” addressing the other MDGs. As Nafis Sadik, special representative of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on HIV/AIDS in Asia, pointed out, gender equality in the LDCs -- 13 of which are in Asia -- is currently ”far down on the agenda.” In countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Cambodia, poor women outnumber poor men, and most have no access to any form of sex education. ”Less educated girls and young women are less able to protect themselves against becoming HIV-positive, fuelling a vicious cycle where gender disparities further contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS,” the report warns. In addition to expanding educational opportunities, extending microcredits -- small loans that stimulate local business -- to rural women would also empower them, Sadik said. ”Women fight for their rights,” she said, ”but will their governments support them?” Sometimes one or both heads of household succumb to AIDS and their children become the sole breadwinners, thereby compromising the goal of universal primary schooling for children, especially girls. The project describes a ”capacity challenge” in LDCs -- a ”weakened institutional capacity for management and delivery of services” as a result of the AIDS pandemic. ”AIDS causes between 19 and 53 percent of all government health employee deaths in Africa,” where 36 of the LDCs are located, according to the report. In many poor countries, it is the ”pillars of society” who are first affected by and lost to AIDS, crippling the ability for governments to respond to each successive wave of HIV infection. Another factor weakening health care in LDCs is the ”brain drain” occurring in countries like Zambia, for example, which lost 550 doctors since its independence in 1964. According to ”Hope,” ”The consequent challenge to economic development is the issue of loss of man power, expertise and skills to more developed countries.” One solution is to find a way to improve job benefits and satisfaction in an effort to keep skilled health care workers within LDC borders. The migratory work patterns of African miners exacerbate long-distance infection, as they are ”two and a half times more likely to be positive than non-migrant workers.” The report pushes for policies that allow miners to move around with their families as a way to curb infection. Johns acknowledged that some LDCs show a relatively low prevalence of HIV/AIDS infection. ”If we act now,” he said, ”we can maintain” this low prevalence -- most importantly through prevention among young people, a factor that was stressed repeatedly by the panel members. The fastest rate of HIV infection occurs among 15-24 year olds, according to the report. Silence is another major obstacle to meeting the MDGs. Maria Ndhlovu, a ”We Care” adviser and HIV/AIDS activist from South Africa, told a harrowing tale of being raped while her child slept on a nearby couch, an attack that led to her diagnosis with HIV. Ndhlovu described how she felt stigmatised but had no one to talk to about her HIV status. On the advice of her doctor she went to a hospital support group where, to her surprise, she found people of all races and cultures. But the stigmatisation ran so deep that participants were arranged on chairs set up back to back, facing away from each other. ”We need access to counseling,” she urged. ”We need to break the silence.” Sadik also linked the practice of arranged marriage to HIV infection on the Indian subcontinent, where many women are joined with men who are unknowingly infected with the virus. In many of these countries, marriage laws legally sanction violence against married women by their husbands, effectively silencing victims of abuse. According to the UNDP, 30 percent of people in Asia living with HIV are women, but only five percent receive the vital anti-retroviral therapy that extends life. Increased political participation can move these issues to the forefront, Sadik argued. For Chowdhury, the dilemma is also fundamentally economic. According to the UN-OHRLL, LDCs paid a combined 5.1 billion dollars in debt servicing payments. In countries like Senegal and Malawi, debt absorbs 30 percent of public income. ”It is a critical challenge for these countries as they are forced to choose between servicing their debts and investing in health and education and tackling poverty and HIV/AIDS,” he said.
Sunday, February 20, 2005
[Global Poverty] From Soaps to Gritty Reality of Poverty
By Wendy Thermos
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
· Former daytime TV producer Gerard Straub traded the high life for a more fulfilling one, making documentaries to help the world's needy.
Gerard Straub knows what it's like to be perched on the pinnacle of success. He also knows what it's like to beg.
Straub once made $10,000 a week as a soap opera producer in
The riches-to-rags journey was of his own doing, spurred by a troubling realization that the world's wealth was surrounded by destitution and suffering.
Today, instead of telling fictional stories of daytime-drama characters, he uses the power of film to document the plight of the world's poor in hopes of prodding the more fortunate to lend a hand.
"It's raw. It's real," said the 57-year-old
Straub has traveled to the world's worst slums to produce documentaries on the despair and squalid conditions of millions of impoverished people. The films are used by aid organizations, such as Union Rescue Mission in
His 1997 film, "We Have a Table for Four Ready," airs annually on many PBS stations at Thanksgiving and has generated more than $250,000 in donations for the
The soap-king-turned-filmmaker has traveled to 39 cities in 11 nations, including
His films are full of disturbing images: thousands of homeless people picking through mountains of garbage for castoffs to sell to junk shops, people horribly disfigured by disease, the indignities of having no privacy or bathroom facilities.
But the documentaries also depict heartwarming family celebrations, people offering their few scraps of sustenance to strangers and joyful faces undaunted by hopeless conditions.
"There's a tremendous love of life in these places, a resiliency, a will to overcome," said Straub.
In all, he has made eight documentaries on the world's paupers. "We Have a Table for Four Ready," the first, tells the story of a soup kitchen run by Franciscan friars in
Straub said that when donations began rolling in from the broadcast, "then I knew. I saw the power of film to change the lives of poor people."
Other films he has produced include "Endless Exodus," on the crushing poverty of Mexican and Salvadoran immigrants to the United States; "Rescue Me," about the indigents who inhabit Los Angeles' skid row; and "Embracing the Leper," on the crippling disease's hidden but startling toll in Manaus, Brazil.
Much of the lighting, music, editing and other technical work is donated by his contacts in the entertainment field. But "I'm constantly begging for funds to do these films," he said. He uses the website of the nonprofit organization he set up to sponsor his work, the San Damiano Foundation, to sell copies of the films and appeal for funds.
"I fervently believe film can touch hearts and minds," he said. "I want people to think about the poor and get them to do something," even if it's donating a few dollars or giving an hour a week to a shelter.
"People are so overextended today," he said, "but they find four hours a day to watch mindless TV shows."
Straub is all too familiar with that mind-set.
He got a temporary job at CBS headquarters in
"I clearly remember I was sitting one day in my office overlooking the ice-skating rink at
"We had to do everything for a ratings point. I knew it wasn't fulfilling me. I wanted to think about more serious things in life."
Intertwined with his fast-paced life was a bumpy relationship with religion. Raised a Catholic, he had long had doubts about his faith. His experiences in the late 1970s as the producer of Pat Robertson's then-fledgling "700 Club" led him to write a book, "Salvation for
He left network TV in 1987 to take a series of consulting and freelance jobs in the entertainment business while he penned an indictment of organized religion, a novel titled "Dear Kate" that was published in 1992.
But it wasn't until 1995 that he found the answer to his quest for a meaningful life, and ironically it sprang from religion.
"I was in an empty church in
Though his work has spiritual overtones, Straub says the films are meant to speak to atheists and people of all faiths. "We must fight the feeling that one person cannot make a difference," he said. "The message is that this is one big human family and we have to take care of each other."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
