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84th Plenary Meeting of General Assembly 71st Session
Despite global gains in the fight against the HIV and AIDS epidemic, some 1,800 young people a day were being newly infected with the virus and prevention rates among adults around the world had stalled, the General Assembly’s President said today.
Peter Thomson, in his remarks at the start of a debate that reviewed international progress towards achieving a world free of the virus by 2030, commended notable advancements, as well. He said that antiretroviral medicines had become significantly more available to those who needed them and that there had been a decline in the number of babies born with HIV.
However, he continued, ending the epidemic by 2030, a goal the international community pledged to last year with the signing of the Political Declaration on Ending AIDS, required a comprehensive approach. It would require ensuring access to education, information and services to people living with HIV and to those groups most at risk.
It was also important to combat the stigma attached to those living with HIV and groups at risk including men who have sex with men and transgender persons, and people who inject drugs, he said. Bringing together the power and cooperation of all stakeholders would help build synergies and progress in the fight against the epidemic. To that end, he urged Member States to fund the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and other programmes that aimed to meet those objectives. It was particularly crucial to close the $7 billion funding gap for the global AIDS response.
“The AIDS pandemic is far from over,” Amina Mohammed, Deputy-Secretary-General of the United Nations, warned. She stressed that young women and adolescent girls, most notably in sub-Saharan Africa, were particularly vulnerable. The region had a high rate of infection, lagged in testing and remained behind in HIV treatment. Addressing such concerning gaps required the integration of HIV into sexual reproductive programmes. She highlighted the critical role of communities in coming up with solutions and encouraged Governments to listen closely to what they had to say. “If we do that, we will truly be able to end AIDS,” Ms. Mohammed added.
She also urged Member States to heed the call to reach the targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and highlighted the need to establish within the United Nations system, and particularly UNAIDS, a culture of accountability that focused on people rather than bureaucracy. Ending AIDS fit squarely within the 2030 Agenda, whose goals and targets reinforced efforts to eradicate the virus.
Echoing a similar sentiment in the debate that followed, Gambia’s representative, speaking on behalf of the African Group, said that poverty and unemployment aggravated HIV and AIDS. The AIDS epidemic was indeed disproportionately affecting sub-Saharan Africa, with Eastern and Southern Africa home to half of the world’s people living with HIV.
Throughout the morning debate, speakers called for a redoubling of global efforts to ensure access to affordable drugs, address the particular vulnerabilities of women and girls, and to boost the international cooperation to the epidemic through UNAIDS and other United Nations programmes.
Norway’s speaker said that, with the female prison population rising globally, HIV prevalence rate among female inmates was much higher than those outside of jail. Many children were born in prisons, and yet there were no systems in place to prevent HIV transmission, or to even monitor transmission in such cases.
Some speakers noted good news, with the representative of India reporting that new infections in his country had declined by 66 per cent from 2000 to 2015. He credited the achievement to collaboration among Government, communities and people living with HIV, and civil society. Reaching “the last mile” would require laws that addressed discrimination and fight stigma in education and the workplace.
Several other speakers also emphasized the need to fight discrimination and stigma, with the delegate from Kenya, where 1.5 million people lived with HIV, said that the Government had launched a “Kick Out HIV Stigma” campaign that sought to engage youth through county football leagues. Colombia’s delegate called stigma a determining factor, which often compounded vulnerabilities, and expressed concern that “someone living with the virus could be rejected by their family or from their job”.
Speakers from developing countries urged developed countries to keep up with their financing of the HIV and AIDS global response. The representative of France, stressing the need for innovative and ambitious funding solutions, said a tax on airline tickets and financial transactions had enabled her country to cover nearly 60 per cent of the annual budget of the international drug purchase facility UNITAID. She went on to say preparations should be made for middle-income countries that would no longer be a part of international financing mechanisms, given that more than half of those living with HIV were in those countries.
Some Member States, although backing global efforts to end AIDS, also said countries should be able to deal with the epidemic as seen fit for their needs. The representative of the Russian Federation said he did not agree with some provisions of the Secretary-General’s report on reinvigorating the AIDS response, which the Assembly had before it. Emphasizing the need for a balanced response that reflected cultural and religious specificities, he said it was perplexing to consider that the criminalization of drugs and drug use was a barrier to AIDS-related services. Punishment for drug-related crimes was the prerogative of States.
Also today, the General Assembly elected Chairpersons to its six committees as follows: Mouayed Saleh (Iraq) to its First Committee (Disarmament and International Security); Sven Jürgenson (Estonia) to its Second Committee (Economic and Financial); Einar Gunnarsson (Iceland) to its Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural); Rafael Darío Ramírez Carreño (Venezuela) to its Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization); Tommo Monthe (Cameroon) to its Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary); and Burhan Gafoor (Singapore) to its Sixth Committee (Legal).
The Assembly also appointed Steve Townley (United Kingdom) as a member of the Committee on Contributions for a term beginning on 1 June and ending on 31 December — as recommended by the Fifth Committee.
Also speaking today were the representatives of Philippines (on behalf of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), Bulgaria, Switzerland, Botswana, Lichtenstein, Namibia, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, Indonesia, Luxembourg, United States, Mexico, El Salvador and Japan, as well as the European Union.
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