[Press Kit]

services, especially education, as well
as HIV prevention and support for
orphans, through such measures as
the 20/20 Initiative.
Among the steps the global
community can take are:
1. Declare a global emergency
The AIDS pandemic has turned subSaharan Africa into a killing field,
creating an orphan crisis of epic proportions requiring nothing less than an
emergency response. Political leaders,
international agencies and national
and international NGOs need to
increase awareness of the scale and
urgency of the AIDS orphan situation.
2. Exchange information
Exchanging information about
successful experiences and projects
can spark and guide action among
neighbouring countries. International
and governmental development
agencies, as well as NGOs, can play
an important role in facilitating such
cooperation and exchange.
3. Keep Africa high on the
development assistance agenda
Official development assistance to
Africa, in decline for a number of
years, needs to be increased along
with support from private foundations and other sources. Resources are
needed of a magnitude that can help
bring successful actions to national
scale. And they must be allocated with
a regularity that governments and

other actors can count on. These
resources can go a long way, as there
is a vast well of experience to guide
actions in sub-Saharan Africa, from
the community level on up. These
actions should aim to improve access
to services and promote other
measures to strengthen families
and communities in the struggle
against HIV/AIDS.
4. Make AIDS a priority in poverty
reduction through debt relief
While increased ODA to Africa is
crucial, it is clear that addressing the
crisis of HIV/AIDS and orphans
will require greater resources than
bolstered ODA could offer.
Debt relief provides one avenue
for such large-scale resource mobilization, particularly since sub-Saharan
African countries are disproportionately burdened by debt. With AIDSexacerbated poverty, debt is a major
stumbling block to improving basic
services. A 1998 UNICEF-UNDP
study of 12 countries in sub-Saharan
Africa showed that 7 of them spent
more than 30 per cent of their national budgets on debt-servicing but only
between 4 and 20 per cent of their
budgets on basic social services.
Through the HIPC Initiative,
initiated by the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund in
1996, a few countries in Africa have
obtained debt relief, but the relief is
too little and too late. To improve the
Initiative, the major industrialized

Debt relief provides one
avenue for
such large-scale
resource mobilization,
particularly since
sub-Saharan African
countries are disproportionately burdened by
debt. With AIDSexacerbated poverty,
debt is a major
stumbling block to
improving basic
services.