Annan says AIDS is threat to Africa's stability
Regional-UN, Health, 1/11/2000

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said that AIDS, like ravaging warfare, has become a great threat to economic, social and political stability in Africa, particularly in the southern and eastern sub-regions.

"Last year AIDS killed about ten times more people in Africa than did armed conflicts," he said in an address Monday to a public meeting of the Security Council devoted to discussions on the impact of AIDS in Africa.

The meeting, arranged by the US, which has assumed the presidency of the council for January, was presided over by US Vice President Al Gore.

Reviewing the ramifications of the AIDS scourge in Africa, Annan said the epidemic, which has created about 10 million orphans, is decimating health workers and teachers and is threatening good governance with the high death rates among the continent's elite.

"And high infection rates in the police and armed forces leave African states ill equipped to face security threats," he underscored.

AIDS, he said, works in a vicious circle feeding on conflicts in the continent to spread and then creating conditions for more conflicts.

"The breakdown of health and education services, the obstruction of humanitarian assistance, the displacement of whole populations and a high infection rate among soldiers, as in other groups which move back and forth across the continent, all these ensure that the epidemic spreads ever further and faster," he noted.

Annan, therefore, urged the Security Council to prevent conflicts from contributing to the spread of AIDS.

He emphasized that AIDS is a global problem with other countries in Asia and eastern Europe also experiencing its spread at an alarming rate.

But he noted that Africa deserves prior attention by virtue of the damage already done by the disease.

Besides AIDS, Annan said, Africa also fares worse globally in other problems.

Out of 48 least developed countries in the world, 33 are in Africa, he said, adding that Africa also accounts for about half of about two dozen conflicts in the world.

"Fifteen sub-Saharan African countries are currently faced with exceptional food emergencies," Annan cited.

He added that in the Democratic Republic of the Congo alone, more than 10 million people face food supply problems caused by the civil war.

Globally, Annan said the world today enjoys more peace than before, though it still faces a number of challenges.

He listed these challenges as environmental degradation, ethnic conflicts, bad governance, violations of human rights, illiteracy and ill health and growing inequality within and between states.

The one-day meeting is expected to draw up measures to deal with the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

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