COMBATING HIV/AIDS IN AFRICA

• COMBATING AIDS IN AFRICA
• PREVENTIVE EDUCATION AGAINST HIV/AIDS
• A CULTURAL APPROACH TO HIV/AIDS PREVENTION AND CARE

According to the World Health Organization, the main cause of mortality in Africa today is AIDS. UNESCO collaborates actively with the other United Nations agencies in the conduct of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

HIV/AIDS preventive education is an accessible and effective strategy for containing the epidemic in developing countries. Taking advantage of its skills in the fields of education, culture and communication, UNESCO accordingly organizes a large number of workshops and seminars in Africa so as to heighten awareness of the impact of this pandemic disease, in particular among young people and women, and to ensure that preventive education is incorporated education systems. The African NGOs are involved in these activities. Attention should be drawn to the pilot project launched in Côte d’Ivoire in partnership with the World Foundation for Research and Prevention of AIDS, directed by Professor Luc Montagnier, for the establishment at Abidjan of an Integrated AIDS Bioclinical Research Centre. The Centre conducts on its premises both basic research and applied research for the clinical monitoring of patients; its priority objectives are to transfer scientific knowledge of AIDS to the subregion of West Africa, to contribute to training of scientific and medical personnel and to develop research to find more suitable forms of treatment for patients in this particularly affected part of Africa
(go to http://www.unaids.org ).

This context provides a background for the project to organize mega-concerts which will raise funds to combat this plague.

Preventive education against HIV/AIDS

"I would like to dwell a moment now on the question of AIDS. In the face of this scourge, described in a very recent United Nations report as the greatest threat to development, UNESCO may play a very specific and crucial role through preventive education, whether formal or non-formal. The aim of the Organization must be twofold: on the one hand, to contribute to reducing the spread of the epidemic through education and information, while on the other hand assisting in confronting the impact of the epidemic on education systems, which in some regions of the world are in a state of total breakdown because of the number of teachers stricken by the disease. Our actions, albeit numerous, have until now been too fragmented. The multidisciplinary nature of the Organization is an invaluable asset. We command expertise on communication which we should bring to bear on scientifically well-founded and culturally adapted preventive education. (…). "So I wish to propose a global strategy for UNESCO's role in the fight against AIDS, especially in the area of preventive education, and to obtain concrete, visible results, especially in Africa". (Address delivered by the Director-General of UNESCO at the information and dialogue meeting of the Executive Board on 23 February 2001).

The education systems of the African countries are very seriously affected by the HIV/AIDS virus. Its impact on the demand for education, the offer, and also the quality of education, is apparent. Children who have been orphaned or whose parents are ill can no longer attend school, or do so irregularly. The teachers too are very much affected - absenteeism, deaths and cases of teachers giving up their profession on account of illness have assumed alarming proportions in some countries of southern Africa. What can be done to protect the education systems from the ravages of the pandemic?

A decision taken by the Executive Board of UNESCO at its 159th session (May 2000) called for the drafting of a "strategic plan of action oriented towards objectives and results as part of the United Nations system strategic plan for HIV/AIDS for 2001-2005". In its 159 EX/Decision 7.1.2 the Executive Board invites the Director-General "to continue in all the Organization's fields of competence, particularly education and science research, to give very high priority to activities designed to meet countries' specific AIDS-prevention needs, with special emphasis on the countries hardest hit by the epidemic, particularly in Africa under the International Partnership against AIDS in Africa". The Director-General followed up this resolution by giving high priority to the fight against HIV/AIDS, particularly through preventive education. UNESCO's strategy for HIV/AIDS preventive education was produced (for distribution as a general information document during the 161st session) as an integral part of the United Nations' actions against HIV/AIDS, i.e. the United Nations System Strategic Plan for HIV/AIDS and the UNAIDS Unified Budget and Workplan. Hence UNESCO's commitment as expressed in its new Strategy for HIV/AIDS preventive education should take as its point of departure the collaboration and division of labour among United Nations agencies and the specific contributions that UNESCO could make.

UNESCO will work to ensure that preventive education is included as a key focus with the international agenda on HIV/AIDS issues. UNESCO will collaborate closely with UNAIDS and its co-sponsors in the United Nations system. In addition, it will, inter alia: (i) engage in advocacy towards non-governmental organizations, civil society and the private sector to muster support and focus energy and resources on preventive education; (ii) address the needs of the regions hardest hit, such as southern Africa; (iii) enhance cooperation with and support for regional initiatives such as the Southern African Development Community (SADEC), the HIV/AIDS Strategic Framework and Programme for Action, the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA), and the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS); (iv) give high priority to gender issues and women's empowerment and work closely with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) on this issue; (v) closely involve UNESCO's Institutes, Regional Education Offices, Cluster Offices and National Offices in the implementation of preventive education, and the sharing of information and monitoring of the effects of the epidemic. The key outcome hoped for is reduction of the number of HIV/AIDS-infected young people by 25% by 2010 - but, in different ways, all groups must be reached. The expected results of preventive education are to be found in effective advocacy, customized educational material, changed risk behaviour, enhanced care and better coping with the impact of the epidemic.

Several activities were organized in 2000-2001 by the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP): (i) A workshop on the effects of AIDS on educational planning was attended by some 30 researchers, planners and representatives of assistance agencies - all working in African or Asian countries seriously affected by the HIV/AIDS virus. The objectives of the workshop were to facilitate the pooling of experience and the exchange of views between people working in different countries, to identify the training needs of planners and administrators of education against a background of AIDS, and to ascertain what further research is required. For this purpose, the workshop compared the various methods that could be employed to measure the effects of the HIV/AIDS virus on the education systems, and discussed the measures that could be taken to protect the progress already made in regard to school enrolments, in a situation marked by a high rate of infection by the virus, and the needs in respect of research and training. (ii) IIEP also organized a resource centre at which all the studies on the implications of the HIV/AIDS virus for education systems are carried out. A database was to be established on the Web to enable all concerned to have access to the studies conducted by the various national researchers and agencies in summary or possibly unabridged form. The database was to be periodically updated. (iii) Action-oriented research was launched in four English-speaking African countries. (iv) The activities undertaken by UNESCO in regard to the HIV/AIDS virus and education were coordinated. (v) IIEP also took part in various seminars, such as those organized by UNESCO's Ghana Office, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) or the UNAIDS working group.

Furthermore, UNESCO provided technical support for the seminar organized by Education International in Durban, South Africa, in July 2000. Teachers' capacities to cope with the HIV/AIDS epidemic in southern Africa were reinforced by this seminar, which reviewed and field-tested a draft training manual for teachers' unions, and also identified measures to be taken in different southern African countries in regard to the use of the training manual and stressed the participants' role as trade union leaders. Other teacher-training programmes and curriculum review and elaboration on HIV/AIDS education were undertaken in Africa, as well as preventive campaigns, both on AIDS and on drug abuse prevention, for and with young people. As part of the international Youth Campaign for a Twenty-First Century Free of Drugs, UNESCO's exhibition of young people's drawings on drugs was shown in Togo.

An international conference on "A cultural approach to HIV/AIDS prevention and care", held from 2 to 4 October 2000 in Nairobi, Kenya, was organized by UNAIDS and the UNESCO Offices in Luanda and Nairobi in cooperation with the Kenyan National Commission for UNESCO. Its aims were to summarize the lessons learned from work carried out in the first two years of the project, to analyse activities in progress and to propose an action plan.

A cultural approach to HIV/AIDS prevention and care

Under this extrabudgetary (UNAIDS/UNESCO) project, five country assessments were produced in 1998-1999 (for Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda and Zimbabwe) on sociocultural aspects of HIV/AIDS prevention in Africa for the purpose of identifying the cultural factors that must be taken into account in developing prevention programmes and strategies in order to ensure their relevance to specific situations and improve their effectiveness. The reports were published and put on the UNESCO website in 2000.

In 2000-2001, two subregional workshops were organized in Uganda (May 2000) and Egypt (June 2000) in collaboration with the African Itinerant College for Culture and Development. Their object was to train specialists from various countries in East and North Africa in order that these specialists might in turn train planners and other professionals to adopt cultural approaches in their work. Two other workshops with the same aim were held in Dakar (early May 2001) for West and Central African countries, and Fez (late April 2001) for Maghreb countries. In addition, a pilot project was launched in Uganda to test and introduce the methods suggested in the project design handbook.

An interregional conference on "A Cultural Approach to HIV/AIDS Prevention" was held in Nairobi from 2 to 4 October 2000. The 47 participants came from African countries (Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe), Arab States, the Caribbean and Asia and were joined by representatives from UNAIDS, UNFPA, UNICEF, UNDCP, UNDP, WHO, the International Organization for Migration, the Pan-American Health Organization, the World Bank, and various NGOs and religious communities.