Speech by the Rt. Hon
Hilary Benn MP on HIV/AIDS at the Church of England
General Synod
This
year we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the
victory over apartheid in South Africa. Church leaders
such as Trevor Huddleston and Desmond Tutu will always
have an honoured place in the history of that struggle,
but Archbishop Ndungane of Cape Town has rightly called
on the churches now to play a similar role in the fight
against AIDS. He says “We are all living with AIDS,
whether infected or affected….AIDS is the new
struggle.”
The
Archbishop is right. In the time it takes me to speak
this sentence another human being will die of HIV/AIDS.
He or she probably lived in one of the poorest
countries in the world.
He or she was probably a breadwinner, a parent,
or a carer. He or she was certainly someone’s son or
someone’s daughter.
Across
the world, 60 million people are HIV positive. 10% of
the world’s AIDS cases are to be found in just one
African country; Nigeria.
In the worst affected places, one in four people
could die from this disease.
Malawi, which depends on education to teach the
next generation and develop its economy, is losing more
teachers to AIDS each year than there are new ones
qualifying.
The
day before yesterday I was in Awasa in Ethiopia. A
thriving town in a country of great poverty, it has a
high rate of HIV/AIDS. I went there to visit a community
organisation run by women for women with HIV is trying
to tackle stigma and provide support to those who have
been abandoned by their families.
Two
days before that I was in rural South Wallo, to the
north of Addis Ababa, to hear from three school pupils
who have organised a campaign against HIV/AIDS by taking
the message to their fellow students.
Two groups of people in Africa trying to do
something and acting now.
AIDS
presents an unprecedented challenge to the developing
world.
It is not just the human cost of the massive loss
of life, and the suffering of individuals and their
families. It is also the cost to development: the damage
of this escalating epidemic to the very capacity of
countries to do something about hunger, extreme poverty
and health and education services that are inadequate or
simply do not exist.
Today
I want to ask for your help because I believe we
can halt this epidemic. We understand the illness and
its causes. We know what needs to be done.
Just look at what has been done.
In
Uganda courageous political leadership and determined
efforts by health workers, community groups and
churches, have turned the tide of infection. Despite the
fact that Uganda once had one of the world’s highest
rates of HIV, year on year the number of new infections
continues to fall.
In
Senegal, HIV never really took off. But this wasn’t
just good luck. Once again, political commitment, the
bravery to speak out, a free media which provided
information, and determined efforts to make things
happen and change people’s behaviour, stopped the
epidemic in its tracks.
In
Thailand, HIV raged at very high levels among the most
stigmatised in society: sex workers and drug users. And
then it turned around. The government working alongside
people, helping them to take the steps they needed to
save their lives. And it has succeeded.
This
is not a hopeless battle.
We have the means to defeat HIV/AIDS.
What
we need is the will, including from the international
community.
What
we need is leadership
What
we need, in a word, is action.
And
that is why in December last year, the UK Government
published its Call for Action on HIV/AIDS which sets out
what we need to see happen over the next year to make
progress:
-
Stronger
political direction;
-
Better
funding;
-
Better
donor coordination; and last but not least
-
Better
HIV/AIDS programmes
The
UK is the world’s second largest bilateral funder of
work on HIV/AIDS – last year we spent £270 million
(up from £38 million in 1997). We are helping to
finance the Global Fund. In December, we doubled our
funding for the UN AIDS programme of co-ordination. We
did this because we know that despite big increases in
funding over the past couple of years, the world still
needs more money for AIDS.
But
even the money we have is not always being spent well
and wisely. In many poor countries, already hard-pressed
governments are spending too much time dealing with
donors, which can mean not enough time tackling the
epidemic.
We need to help them to cut through bureaucracy
and concentrate on actually fighting the disease on the
ground.
That
is why the Call for Action also stressed the importance
of what we call the ‘Three Ones’. Every country
needs just:
I
was delighted to see that in the report you will be
debating later today you have already responded to the
Call for Action. In that report, Christian Aid also ask
us to spend more. Let me assure you that the UK will
play its part. We will persuade others to narrow the
funding gap and we will do so ourselves.
We
will prioritise yet more HIV/AIDS work within the
additional £320 million which will be spent on UK
development aid to Africa in the next two years. And as
we increase funding and develop our policy, I am keen to
hear your views about what more we should be doing. We
will be organising a consultation event for
community-based and faith-based organisations in the
next few months.
I
also welcome your analysis of how HIV is devastating
economies. You put challenging questions to the World
Bank and IMF in asking them to reconsider their
macroeconomic policies. I would welcome any specific
ideas you have about how this can be done. Your report
also emphasises the importance of the role played by
communities in general, and people living with HIV/AIDS
in particular. I agree. Governments cannot tackle AIDS
alone.
As
the Church, you have often led the way, caring for
people. But sadly there are still those who lead in the
opposite direction.
Stigma
and discrimination because of HIV status and because of
sexuality continue to be a heavy burden. As we try to
get treatments to people, we learn that many are simply
too frightened of HIV to get tested. Women would rather not
get the treatment they need – to save their lives, or
stop their children from getting HIV - than cope with
the fear and stigma of HIV.
This
is just one area where we need courageous church leaders
speaking out, embracing people with HIV/AIDS. I know
that many of you have done so, l but it needs to happen
more. We will only defeat discrimination if societies,
cultures and institutions change.
When
Clare Short spoke to Synod in 1998, she said – in her
inimitable way – that the Church should talk less
about sex and more about poverty. The problem with AIDS,
is that it demands that we do both.
The
Church is very good at talking about moral values and
family life, but one of the many challenges that AIDS
poses is the need to speak about sex in different ways.
To speak about options for those who do not live up to
their own, or the church’s, ideals. In Uganda and
Senegal religious leaders have been directly involved in
HIV prevention campaigns.
But
let’s be clear, the ABC approach - Abstinence, Be
Faithful, Use Condoms - works because it stresses all
three: abstinence doesn’t work for all the people all
of the time; being faithful is a wonderful ideal – but
it is sadly too often a one way thing; and so condoms
are part of the answer.
In
November I met a young woman from Kenya who told me
about the group of HIV-positive women she runs. 75% of
the women in her group were infected by their husband -
their sole sexual partner.
Here is a real leadership challenge for the
churches.
How
do you speak to the men in your congregations, in a way
that reflects reality as well as ideals? What messages
do you give about a woman’s role? If women are told
simply to respect and obey their husbands, or service
their needs, how does that affect the choices they make,
the risks they take?
AIDS
is a challenge to us all to work differently, and
tackling AIDS is about doing just that, but have any of
us really done enough about AIDS ?
Last year, when I addressed the UN special
session on AIDS, I said:
“If
we are honest, we should have done more sooner and we
could all do more now.”
I was speaking then of governments, but I suspect
these words will also resonate within the church.
In
the very early days of the epidemic, society, including
the church, was quite hostile to those with HIV. With a
few shining exceptions, there was a distaste for the
heady mixture of sex and disease. Judgement was passed
on those who had succumbed to a deadly sexually
transmitted infection.
We
have all made a great journey since then.
Today,
faith based organisations play a leading role in the
fight against HIV.
You have an extensive network of people and
institutions, especially in rural areas, where few other
institutions exist.
Many Africans are far more committed to their
churches than to other social or political
organisations.
This
is why so many churches and faith-based organisations
have an incredible history of helping people with AIDS.
In many countries in Africa, you are providing a
lot of the schools, and nearly half of the health
services.
We
are beginning to see excellent treatment programmes in
many mission hospitals.
But these must start to reach more people. New
HIV treatments can improve life expectancy dramatically
for people living with AIDS – and help them to
continue to work or to bring up families.
The UK stands ready to help achieve the ambitious
goal to get 3 million people on treatment by 2005.
We
are determined that these treatments must reach the
poorest – and that’s why we are urging WHO to make
sure half of those who benefit are women and girls.
Getting women on treatment is not only good for women,
and it is good for society.
If mothers live longer, we will have fewer
orphans.
I
know that these are issues close to the church’s heart
as you care for orphans and support the growing network
of families fostering orphans. One example is the
partnership DFID has funded with Christian Aid and the
Church of the Province of Southern Africa; a wonderful
model of how we can work together to provide new and
more effective ways of helping orphans and the families
who care for them.
And
so my plea to you today is for the voice of the Church
to be heard loud and clear.
The
Church of England’s leadership on development has been
a beacon.
Your
campaigning work on debt has made a real difference.
You
have helped to make us all think about this small and
fragile planet that we share with one another.
About
how we are more interdependent now than any other time
in human history.
About
how this thing we call globalisation is, in fact, the
product of human activity in which travel, and trade,
and technology and television have shrunk the globe.
And
all of this has taught us that a world in which 1 in 5
of our fellow human beings live on less than 67 pence a
day; a world in which 1.2 billion people won’t have
any clean water to drink today; a world in which 113
million children have no classroom, no textbook, no
teacher and no window on the world because they do not
go to school; a world that will never be secure unless
we tackle poverty, injustice and inequality. And AIDS
creates all three.
And
so my hope is that we can live up to the words of the
prayer that begins each day in Parliament and asks this
of us as Members:
“May
they never lead the nation wrongly through love of
power, desire to please, or unworthy ideals; but laying
aside all private interests and prejudices keep in mind
their responsibility to seek to improve the condition of
all mankind.”
Defeating
AIDS would indeed improve the condition of all mankind.
And this is the reason why we look to you, your
leadership, your faith and your commitment, because
working together around the world, we can change things.
The
old African proverb says “The best time to plant a
tree is ten years ago. The next best time is now.”
If
we are to beat AIDS we must indeed act, and the time to
act is now.
