Zuma's Beliefs

Does anybody know what Jacob Zuma, the new leader of the African National Congress, thinks about (i) HIV, and (ii) Zimbabwe?

Sowing Instability

"It is an accepted axiom of the modern age that distance no longer matters. Sectarian carnage can sway stock markets on the other side of the planet. Anarchic cities that host open-air arms bazaars imperil the security of the world’s superpower. A hermit leader’s erratic behavior not only makes life miserable for the impoverished millions he rules but also upends the world’s nuclear nonproliferation regime. The threats of weak states, in other words, ripple far beyond their borders and endanger the development and security of nations that are their political and economic opposites."

In publishing the third annual Failed States Index, Foreign Policy magazine and The Fund for Peace assert that the world's weakest states aren't just a danger to themselves, but threaten the progress and stability of countries half a world away.

As if to prove the point, the latest World Drug Report confirms how events on the other side of our global village are devastating lives on our own doorsteps. We already knew that last year's bumper opium crop in Afghanistan meant the country had become the source of 92% of the world's supply of opium. We now learn that opium cultivation in the country involves one in eight (12.6%) of the population and that 50% of the heroin on Britain's streets comes from Helmand alone, the province supposedly under British control.

Afghanistan's record poppy yield and drug trafficking routes, fuelled by underground heroin factories, bring crime, addiction, and HIV/AIDS in their wake. The industry finances the activities of the Taleban, against whom the 7,700 troops we have deployed in the country are fighting. Britain's new ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, already believes we could be heavily involved in Afghanistan for decades to come. Once again, if we are to have any hope of bringing stability to the region, we must give serious consideration to the Conservatives' suggestion to license the Afghan opium poppy crop.

Bush Leads G8 AIDS Deal

Leaders of the G8 nations will today pledge to spend $60bn (£30bn) fighting Aids in Africa. However, before we crack out the champagne, we ought to look at their track record. So far, they have provided less than 10% of the extra aid they promised Africa at the G8 summit in Gleneagles almost two years ago. Doing slightly better than most of our European partners—and much better than the current G8 president, Germany, who has performed particularly badly—Britain's overall aid budget has increased by 12.6% over this period. However, it is America who is leading the way in the global fight against HIV/AIDS. Here's what President Bush had to say last week:

The United States has responded vigorously to this crisis. In 2003, I asked Congress to approve an emergency plan for AIDS relief. Our nation pledged $15 billion over five years for HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care in many of the poorest nations on Earth. In the years since, thanks to the support of the United States Congress and the American people, our country has met this pledge. This level of assistance is unprecedented, and the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease in human history.

This investment has yielded the best possible return: saved lives. To date, the emergency plan has supported treatment for 1.1 million people infected with HIV. This is a promising start, yet without further action, the legislation that funded this emergency plan is set to expire in 2008. Today I ask Congress to demonstrate America's continuing commitment to fighting the scourge of HIV/AIDS by reauthorizing this legislation now. I ask Congress to double our initial commitment and approve an additional $30 billion for HIV/AIDS prevention, for care, and for treatment over the next five years.

So, when you hear German Chancellor Angela Merkel announce their landmark new AIDS deal, just remember: there would be no deal without President Bush, who will contribute at least half of the pledged assistance—and who is the only one with a record for delivering on his pledges.

Climate Convert Or Con Artist?

American President George W Bush has urged countries to agree on long-term goals for greenhouse gas emissions but will oppose demands at next week's G8 summit in Germany for the USA to cut emissions and join a global carbon trading system. Is he belatedly trying to seize the initiative on climate change, or is this simply "a deliberate and carefully crafted attempt to derail any prospect of a climate change agreement," "a delaying tactic to keep the climate change issue off his back in terms of any real decisions until he leaves office," as Tony Juniper, the executive director of Friends of the Earth believes?

Outlining his development strategy "to bring progress and prosperity to struggling nations all across the world" to the United States Global Leadership Campaign, a coalition of more than 400 businesses, humanitarian organisations and community leaders, the President also called on Congress to double US funds for the global fight against HIV/AIDS and to fund his 2005 commitment to expand American assistance to sub-Saharan Africa to $8.67 billion by 2010.

Bursting at the Seams

"Let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests, and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity, for in the final analysis our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's future, and we are all mortal."

So concluded Professor Jeffrey Sachs in the first of this year's Reith lectures this morning, after asking some challenging questions about the geo-political problems facing our generation as a result of living in an unprecedentedly crowded world:

Can it be true that because we don't want to talk to Iran, H5N1 won't pass through Iran, we won't have to deal with avian 'flu in places we don't want to speak to, because we put on pre-conditions to negotiations, that we can't see the commonality of our problems? And can it really be, ladies and gentlemen, that the solution to Darfur, one of the most urgent crises on the planet, is all about peacekeepers and troops and sanctions, when we know that in Western Darfur the rebellion started because this is just about the poorest place on the whole planet, where the rebellion started because there's not enough water to keep people alive, where the livestock have no veterinary care, where there's no basic infrastructure, where a power grid may be a thousand miles away? Can we really think that peacekeeping troops and sanctions will solve this problem?

And how can it be, ladies and gentlemen, that we think we can be safe? We think we can be safe when we leave a billion people to struggle literally for their daily survival, the poorest billion for whom every day is a fight to secure enough nutrients, a fight against the pathogen in the water that can kill them or their child, a fight against a mosquito bite carrying malaria or another killer disease for which there's no medicine though the medicines exist and are low cost but there's no medicine in the village available to save the child and thus a million or two million children will die this year of malaria. How can we think that this can be safe? And how can we choose, as we do in the United States, to have a budget request this year of six hundred and fifty billion dollars for the military - more than all the rest of the world combined - and four and a half billion dollars for all of African assistance, and think that this is prudent? One might say oh it's a science fiction that a zoonotic disease could arise and somehow spread to the world, except that Aids is exactly that. How many examples do we need to understand the linkages, and the common threats, and the recklessness of leaving people to die, recklessness in spirit, in human heart, and in geo-political safety for us?

However, despite Sachs' infectious optimism, like a number of people in the audience, I felt that the kind of "gradual evolution in human institutions" that Sachs is calling for if mankind is to rise to these great global challenges requires too much faith in intergovernmental institutions and a step change in human nature which is simply not going to happen.  Any thoughts anyone?

Asylum For AIDS Victims

Twenty suspected HIV-positive children of failed asylum seekers are due to be deported, according to Martin Narey, the chief executive of the leading children's charity Barnardo’s.

While Mr Narey claims deporting the children would be to send them to their deaths, the Home Office says that "We are not convinced that a special dispensation should be made for victims of HIV. It could create inconsistencies in how we treat people with other serious illnesses."

Do readers think compassion should outweigh other criteria used to determine such cases, or would it merely risk opening the floodgates for others who are sick to attempt to gain entry to this country and, once here, to be supported by our tax-payer-funded health service?