The gap between the world's rich and poor has never been wider. Malnutrition, AIDS, conflict and illiteracy are a daily reality for millions. But it isn't chance or bad luck that keeps people trapped in bitter, unrelenting poverty. It's man-made factors like a glaringly unjust global trade system, a debt burden so great that it suffocates any chance of recovery and insufficient and ineffective aid. What's poverty got to do with AIDS? The Make Poverty History campaign is rooted in the conviction that 2005 can be the turning point in the fight to eliminate poverty from the face of the earth. The mesh of poverty and HIV/AIDS is the deadliest combination on the planet, and there's not the slightest possibility of confronting poverty so long as AIDS runs its savage course. To make poverty history requires making AIDS history.' Stephen Lewis, UN Secretary-General Kofi Anan's special envoy on AIDS in Africa, launching the Canadian Make Poverty History Campaign. Worldwide, 95% of the 40 million people living with HIV and AIDS live in developing countries. Those countries, already struggling with unjust trade, crippling debt, and ineffective and insufficient aid, have been shellshocked by AIDS. In countries like ours, HIV positive people can access drugs that can keep them alive and healthy for up to twenty years, but the world's poor are dying from AIDS in their millions because they lack access to care and treatment. It is one of the world's most grotesque injustices that HIV in Scotland is a health status, but for the poor in South Africa it's a death sentence. In Africa, Asia and elsewhere, HIV positive people are dying because unjust trade, debt repayments and insufficient and ineffective aid have meant they are literally too poor to live. We have already lost 20 million people to the virus, and there are 15 million orphans whose parents have been stolen from them by AIDS. As people die, the epidemic robs communities and regions of their producers, public servants and future leaders. In Zambia, for example, roughly half the teachers trained each year are dying from AIDS. At the Gleneagles G8 summit, G8 leaders responded courageously to the scale of the AIDS emergency. In pledging AIDS treatment to everyone who requires it by 2010, the G8 have started to restore hope to the 40 million people currently living- and dying- with HIV. This political commitment was one of the defining successes of the summit and it will require concerted international action in the next six months to turn it from an historic pledge to a revolutionary reality. AIDS activists across the world will be looking to donors to deliver full AIDS funding at the Global Fund Replenishment conference this September. In December's World Trade Organisation negotiations, we will be pushing for a flexible intellectual property framework that puts public health before private profit. Without adequate financing and fair trade in medicines, this bold and visionary target could become another of the broken promises that litter the history of the pandemic. Take Action Now The biggest ever anti-poverty movement came together under the banner of Make Poverty History in 2005. And now, in 2006, the fight against poverty continues. On this page you will find actions you can take to pressure politicians and decision makers to help make poverty history.
