Editorial 4: Youth and AIDS

Youth and AIDS
In an interview with the delegates from the MSF, they expressed concern over the lack of attention being given to young children in the WHO and UNDP. Their concern was primarily about the neglect to young children suffering from AIDS, with too much being focused on older youths.

MSF argues that young children must be protected, primarily because they are going to be adults twenty years down the road, which stands in contrast to youths who will be taking up their yoke of responsibility in society within the next five to ten years. Knowing that they will form the economically productive population base in society within the next generation, their numbers must not be depleted before they can reach their age of coming. They also wish to see children protected for purely compassionate reasons.

Though I agree with the MSF on the need to protect children, I believe that the focus and direction of the UNDP to focus on older youths is correct. They are the ones that will be caring for this decade’s young children when their parents die off (life expectancy in Africa is considerably shorter than in first-world nations), and they will be the ones that will support them financially. By going with the Canadian and Norwegian initiatives to provide training to them in HIV/AIDS education, and by ensuring that they are able to return home with the funds needed to promote AIDS awareness, prevention and treatment programs, they will be able to invoke local change within their own communities, which may prove far more effective than relying on NGOs and their bureaucracies.

Given Africa’s general reluctance to see the West’s intervention in their domestic conflicts (Darfur, Uganda and Somalia are prime examples), it would be reasonable to argue that Africa wishes to have more independence in governing their own matters. While NGOs and other national aid agencies in the West may be able to provide expertise and funding, true change can only be invoked when local people are involved in their own communities. We see this with Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela, who were locally involved in their own communities to bring about great change. I believe that the UNDP’s initiative by Norway and Canada, if it pulls through, will help not only the African region but also other AIDS-afflicted regions such as Haiti and India to overcome their AIDS epidemic problem.

As such, I would like to applaud the UNDP’s initiatives on youth education. If any resolution gets passed today, I believe this is the one that will come first.