HIV/AIDS - BECOMING AN INCREASINGLY SECURITY ISSUE IN THE PACIFIC

August 18, 2004 - (Pacnews) Pacific women were today issued a somber reminder to be ready to accept the HIV/AIDS tide getting washed up on to the doorsteps of their huts in the islands.

They were told that HIV/AIDS would, like high and low tides, become a large part of Pacific daily lives and turn into a major security threat in the coming years.

Delivering a paper on the issue, Chaitanya Lakshman, of the Institute of Justice and Applied Legal Studies of the University of the South Pacific (USP), Fiji, maintained that only sustained commitment from all fronts can turn the tide on HIV/AIDS and save the lives of Pacific Island people.

And with the increase in cases in the region, Pacific women, like their immediate neighbours in other regions, are increasingly at great risk of infection.

Mr Lakshman's paper, "Emerging Issue: HIV/AIDS and Women in the Pacific Island Countries and Territories", was based on a broad range of arguments, with detailed discussion on the human rights context.

It highlighted two crucial areas of concern - human rights and its importance in response to HIV/AIDS in Pacific countries and the inevitable discord between individual rights and the public health.

He has called "anti-human rights fanatics" those who want the names of people living with the disease revealed.

"The precarious position of women in Pacific Island countries often means that they are not free to make their own decisions about their sexual relations, exercise options or insist on preventive measures," he said.

"Cultural expectations in relation to marriage and childbirth and child rearing, together with the absence of economic support outside the kinship, add to the difficulties that women face in avoiding exposure to HIV/AIDS."

"This brings about a special need to honour the rights of women who are in grave danger of being discriminated against and socially stigmatized," Mr Lakshman stated.

"One of the most contentious issues has been privacy and confidentiality," he said. "On this issue, human rights activists have campaigned for the right to privacy of the individuals living with HIV/AIDS, while public health proponents and other anti-human rights fanatics have frantically been lobbying for the disclosure of the identity of individuals living with HIV/AIDS."

He concluded that overall, HIV/AIDS has not yet been sufficiently mainstreamed as a concern that cuts across a range of issues and sectors, rather than just those related to health.

HIV/AIDS constitutes the 5th Pacific Platform for Action goal - that Pacific Island governments stop its spread, and other sexually transmitted infections (STI). Since the PPA was declared in 1993 it has been generally accepted that HIV rates have "risen sharply" in several Pacific Island countries.

The report on HIV/AIDS "as a security issue within the Pacific Countries and territories" points to a recent United Nations AIDS (UNAIDS) study, which showed that in 2003, an estimated 4.8 million people became newly infected with HIV, more than in any one year before. Approximately 37.8 million people are living with HIV, which killed 2.9 million people in 2003, and over 20 million since the first cases of HIV/AIDS were identified in 1981.

Regional statistics noted that while the number of officially reported cases in the region was "relatively low" as compared to other regions in the world, "HIV/AIDS is well established in Guam, Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia and French Polynesia".

"The inadequacies of data available on HIV/AIDS in many countries in the region mean that it is difficult to know with any certainty the full extent of the pandemic", said Dr Penelope Schoeffel in her technical paper titled "An Evaluation of the Thirteen Critical Issues (of PPA) and the Status of Pacific W omen".

While Mr Lakshman and Dr Schoeffel gave grim accounts of what is happening on the HIV/AIDS scene in the Pacific Islands, women leaders have adopted to support all recommendations related in the paper, which was commissioned by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), for the Ministerial Meeting later this week.

From: http://www.hellopacific.com/news/general/show/news/2004/08/17/17reg13.html