Peacekeeping forces must become leaders in fight against HIV/AIDS, UN says

In the global fight against HIV/AIDS, the United Nations is working to ensure that uniformed and civilian peacekeeping personnel become leaders in suppressing the pandemic, senior UN officials told the Security Council today.

The Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) joined forces on that initiative in 2001 and their chiefs briefed the Security Council on progress in implementing resolution 1308, which was adopted in 2000 and asks Secretary-General Kofi Annan to provide training to peacekeeping personnel on preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Ninety-two countries are contributing over 42,000 UN military personnel and civilian police.

"We want to ensure that peacekeepers and all uniformed personnel are leaders in the fight against AIDS, not its victims. And by acting simultaneously on prevention, care and impact mitigation, we can stop the epidemic's corrosive impact on security," UNAIDS Executive Director Dr. Peter Piot said.

"Resolution 1308 recognized the devastating impact of HIV-AIDS on all sectors and levels of society," Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guéhenno said. "But its focus was on the vulnerability of uniformed services and international peacekeeping personnel. When we talk of 'peacekeepers' it is crucial to underscore that this includes civilian staff, as well as military and police personnel."

Secretary-General Kofi Annan, asked by journalists before the Security Council meeting whether enough progress had been made in the fight against AIDS, said, "Yes, I think we have made some progress, but there is still a lot to be done. We should not overlook the fact that this is major global epidemic and I don't think we are doing enough."

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria already was running out of money and by the year 2005 the fight against the pandemic would need about $10 billion a year, he said.

"We have made grants to about 93 countries," Mr. Annan said. "I would want to see a situation where the Fund gets about $3 billion a year - hopefully a billion from the US, a billion from the European Union and then we will raise the additional billion from other sources."

He also said more leaders, from Presidents to community leaders, needed to speak out against discrimination against AIDS sufferers.

Mr. Guéhenno said one of DPKO's major achievements was placing HIV/AIDS policy advisers at UN Headquarters and in peacekeeping missions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Timor-Leste, Ethiopia and Eritrea and Sierra Leone.

A policy adviser would be sent to Liberia, while six missions had HIV/AIDS focal points and some missions were offering voluntary confidential counselling and testing, he added.

Over 75 countries, including all major troop-contributors, had sent critiques of a new pre-deployment training module on HIV/AIDS, based on regional seminars in Chile, Finland, Kenya and Thailand, Mr. Guéhenno said.

Because of the difficulty in making international training culturally specific, however, troop contributors were being encouraged to "mainstream HIV awareness" in their national training programmes, with technical help from UNAIDS, he said.

Dr. Piot said: "At least 38 countries now have a national strategy addressing AIDS in uniformed services, which was one of the goals of Resolution 1308."

UNAIDS was working extensively with armed forces to make sure that HIV prevention education took place before deployment and was reinforced at demobilization, he said.

Countries hosting peacekeeping forces have called for mandatory testing, Dr. Piot said.

He was convinced, however, that "voluntary HIV testing should be a normal part of defence-force operations and it is equally important that access to voluntary HIV testing and counselling is integrated into AIDS-response measures among populations in the countries hosting peacekeepers."