WORLD AIDS DAY: Children Teach an Important Lesson
Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Dec 1 2005 (IPS) – The lesson on AIDS millions of children learnt at school on World AIDS Day Thursday could be the most important lesson of their lives; it could be a lesson also that they taught their elders who have forgotten the lessons taught by AIDS around the world.
Children around the world attended what was called a Lesson for Life organised around the world by the Global Movement for Children and the World AIDS Campaign.
Health and the dangers of HIV/AIDS took over from lessons in maths, language and history in thousands of schools in countries that ran down the alphabetical range from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe.
We ve had about 10 million children taking part in AIDS lessons across the world today, Kate Norgrove from the Global Movement for Children told IPS. Not all have been taking the lessons in schools, though. A lot of the lessons have been in non-formal groups.
In India working children gathered in Kolkata to teach other children about the dangers from AIDS, she said. In Zambia hundreds of children gathered outside of school to demand free treatment for children suffering from AIDS.
In Vietnam thousands of children were involved in a three-day workshop on AIDS. In France about a thousand children met in the hall of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) for a collective lesson on AIDS.
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We ve had a particularly strong response in East Europe and Asia because that is where AIDS cases have shown a sharp rise, Norgrove said. The Global Movement for Children, which is a coalition of children s groups drew widespread support for its campaign.
But it is not just a lesson for children, Norgrove said. The fact that they were learning this lesson is a lesson for governments too, she said.
The children have tackled AIDS head on, said Miquel De Paladella from the Global Movement for Children. Our leaders must sit up and take notice of these children their innovation and energy puts our governments to shame.
The campaign seeks to draw particular attention to children suffering from AIDS. Of the three million new cases of AIDS reported this year, more than half a million have been children.
While the incidence of AIDS remains highest in sub-Saharan Africa, even among children, more and more children are being affected also in other parts of the world.
Children are missing from global awareness, budgets, and action on HIV/AIDS, and do not have the services, care, support and knowledge that they need, the coalition said in a statement.
The group said that fewer than 5 percent of HIV positive children have access to treatment, and that less than 10 percent of children who have lost parents to AIDS get public support or care.
G8 leaders made a commitment to AIDS treatment for all by 2010 but the funding commitments from these donors fall drastically short of what is needed to achieve this target, the global children s group said. The G8 is a group of eight industrialised countries (the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia).
Leaders pledged 3.7 billion dollars at the UN meeting in September to the global fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria, but that is only half of the 7 billion dollars needed, and not enough to start any new programmes in 2006 and 2007, the group said.
Empty promises cost lives, Miquel De Paladella said. Every year that governments fail to meet their commitments is another year that the millions of children affected by HIV/AIDS are without the care, support and treatment that are their need and their right.