By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, June 8 -- In the run-up to today's HIV / AIDS summit at the UN, member states have been meeting on the second floor of the North Lawn building to negotiate an outcome documents. Outside, civil society and medical groups complained to Inner City Press about the politics and prejudice inside the closed UN room.
On June 6 at a press conference sponsored by MSF / Doctors Without Borders, Inner City Press asked the Chair of South Africa’s Treatment Action Campaign Nonkosi Khumalo which countries had been the most problematic.
While so often in the UN being diplomatic means not naming names, and therefore reforming nothing, Ms. Khumalo to her credit named Egypt, Uganda and Malawi as the most retrograde, while chiding Swaziland as chair of the African Group for not speaking up enough.
Inner City Press asked if Egypt's position hadn't gotten any better after the outer of Mubarak in what's called the Arab Spring. No, Ms. Khumalo said, Egypt's position hadn't changed, leading her to wonder out loud from whom Egypt's delegation to the UN is receiving its instructions.
On June 7, the head of UNAIDS Michel Sibide was scheduled for a 12:15 press conference. The moderator announced that he would not appear, as he was still in the Security Council. Inner City Press ran there and asked him, what about anti-AIDS activist Maxim Popov, arrested by Uzbekistan for distributing an AIDS education pamphlet funded by the UN?
Thanks for asking me again, he answered. He said he continues to work on the case, but that the Uzbek government does not engage in dialogue.
Inner City Press asked, with the NGOs?
Nor with us, he answered. Inner City Press also asked about Ukraine's harassment of NGOs who work on AIDS, picking over their finances with a fine toothed comb. He said he'd heard of it; his colleague blamed this on Ukraine being uncomfortable with harm reduction and methadone programs. And so it goes at the UN.
Footnote: NGOs are complaining that they are Banned from the UN's North Lawn building from Wednesday through Friday, because the UN Department of Safety and Security considers this a summit. Will that mean that all NGOs are barred? We'll see.
