AIDS-Affected Countries Tell U.S. to Keep Its Money

Washington, DC - May 13, 2005

More than 40 million people worldwide are living with HIV or AIDS, and another 14,000 people are infected each day – mainly by sexual transmission. The Bush administration claims to have elevated this public health emergency to a top priority, in 2003 pledging to spend US$15 billion over five years to help eliminate the virus. But rather than ensuring the swift and direct disposal of those funds to proven efforts on the ground, the government is tying up its aid in ideological stipulations – and AIDS-affected countries are choosing to go without.

Like the Mexico City Policy, or Global Gag Rule, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) joins a suite of restrictive and ultimately destructive foreign aid policies. It promises critical resources to defeat AIDS, but is laden with culturally biased requirements that ignore the sexual component of this epidemic and jeopardize the health of those in recipient countries.

Successful HIV/AIDS prevention programs require a range and mix of interventions tailored to the specific public health needs of various communities, and those who are best positioned to determine that range and mix are those who live and work among these communities. The Bush administration, however, chooses not to work with recipient country governments or in-country NGOs to implement its resources effectively; instead it uses its financial power to mandate an inflexible framework in which aid may be spent – a framework that neglects the reality of HIV transmission and prioritizes the U.S. government’s conservative moral agenda.

Now more than two years after announcing PEPFAR, President Bush has not spent enough annually to meet his promise of $15 billion, and what funds have been dispensed are being questioned or simply rejected. By manipulating its purse strings, forcing countries to choose between funds and principles, and imposing its own measure of which HIV/AIDS-stricken or -at risk patients should benefit from foreign aid and which should not, the United States is undermining its commitment to the elimination of this pandemic and the severity with which it credits this global emergency.

Population Action International (PAI) works to improve individual well-being and preserve global resources by mobilizing political and financial support for population, family planning and reproductive health policies and programs.