Whatever you do UNICEF, accentuate the positive

I am getting so tired of the habitual UN practice of pumping up the positive side of anything they do on AIDS, and leaving the bad news for the small print. It is so dishonest and deceitful. I have just read the latest and most staggering example I can recall.

Instead of launching your one-year stock-take of the ‘Unite for Children, Unite against AIDS’ campaign, why don’t you just admit it, UNICEF, progress on the global response to children and AIDS is appalling, and no amount of media spin will change the numbers. If this is your mandate, then you may have screwed up big time. But we're all human, right?

One year after the launch of the campaign, press releases with headlines like:

“Signs of progress and momentum in global response to children and AIDS”

do nothing to mask the fact that progress against the campaign’s four 'Ps’ are nothing short of shameful. Trying to claim otherwise to placate your donors, or whoever else it is you are stroking, is reprehensible.

Preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV:

Despite your focus on the handful of “countries that have achieved breakthroughs in preventing HIV transmission from mothers to children,” the overall access of pregnant women with HIV to appropriate drugs is 9%. You were right to refer to that as “unconscionably low.”

The Campaign goal for this ‘P’ is: By 2010, offer appropriate services to 80 per cent of women in need

Providing paediatric treatment

How the global average of “one in ten children needing antiretroviral treatment receiving it” constitutes progress is beyond me. And indirectly claiming some of the credit for the paediatric formulation price reductions negotiated by the Clinton Foundation – which surely is something UNICEF itself should have been blazing a trail on long ago – is manipulative and conniving.

The Campaign goal for this ‘P’ is: By 2010, provide either antiretroviral treatment or cotrimoxazole, or both, to 80 per cent of children in need

Preventing infection among adolescents and young people

Again, you choose to accentuate the positive by saying: “The stocktaking report notes that prevention responses are displaying renewed attention on the need to focus strategies on adolescents and young people most at risk.” I am not even sure what that means, it is such circuitous wriggling. The 2006 AIDS Epidemic Update, published just two months ago, describes the state of this ‘P’ very clearly:

In many regions of the world, new HIV infections are heavily concentrated among young people (15–24 years of age). Among adults 15 years and older, young people accounted for 40% of new HIV infections in 2006.

The Campaign goal for this ‘P’ is: By 2010, reduce the percentage of young people living with HIV by 25 per cent globally

Protecting and supporting children affected by HIV/AIDS

The section of the release really clutches for something self-congratulatory to say, and plumps for referring to the significant reduction “in several countries” between orphans and non-orphans in access to education. In one of his last addresses as UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis called the response to the needs of children affected by the epidemic “microscopic”. He also said:

It is impossible to understand how, in the year 2006, we still continue to fail to implement policies to address the torrent, the deluge of orphan children.

One of the chilling pieces of data UNICEF should be emphasizing is that only three to five per cent of orphans receive any intervention of any kind from the state.

The Campaign goal for this ‘P’ is: By 2010, reach 80 per cent of children most in need


Why is UNICEF afraid of just telling the truth? I thought that was what advocacy was about.

Thank goodness that some journalists have taken the trouble to read the report for themselves and are today conveying the considerable disappointment that UNICEF should be communicating about it:

Few pregnant African women get AIDS drugs: UNICEF
Scientific American

African moms still pass on HIV to kids
Pretoria News

UN Report: Response To Children With AIDS Insufficient
All Headline News

Spread of AIDS to children slowing, but picture bleak
Canadian Broadcasting Company

UN Says Global AIDS Effort for Children Falls Far Short
New York Times



Ann M. Veneman is UNICEF's Executive Director