African trade unions at UN CSD call for G8 AIDS working group

Angela Lomosi from the African Regional Organisation of the International Trade Union
Confederation (ITUC-AFRO) is part of a team delivering letters to government delegations attending the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), asking their Heads of State to encourage next June’s G8 Summit in Germany to create a high level working group that would track and report on its promises regarding HIV & AIDS.

"We believe that inadequate monitoring of commitments on AIDS is bad news for sustainable development,” she said, explaining that African unions see AIDS getting worse for lack of tracking and
reporting by the industrialised countries about the pandemic”.

AIDS undermines environment and health services

The letter to the delegates indicates that AIDS cuts across environment and health issues, with implications for capacity-building and the achievement of the MDGs. Lomosi said African governments have reported to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that the pandemic is undermining their capacity to implement climate change adaptation measures, raising concern about the impact of AIDS on future delivery of environmental and emergency services. She said that reduced capacity to provide clean water, for example, contributes to the spread of other infectious diseases. “Countries are also reporting human resource shortages in the health sectors and in ministries of agriculture and rural development.”

More seriously, she said AIDS reinforces a vicious cycle of poverty because working people continue to die or suffer from the disease and the health costs are driving them and their families into poverty.

German G8 Presidency hears from African voices

Three weeks ago in a letter to the Global Union HIV/AIDS Committee, the German government G8 Presidency agreed to bring the issue of AIDS reporting the full Summit for discussion. However, the unions want to know what this could mean in practice and have resolved to continue building support for a working group.

German embassies in 14 countries become targets: AFRO’s letter delivery at the CSD is part of the Global Unions’ HIV/AIDS campaign announced last December to convince the German government about the need for a working group process. In fourteen developing countries1 unions recently lobbied with the German embassies for it and the list of other unions joining the effort is growing.

African Governments & employers drawn in: The momentum has prompted AFRO’s General Secretary, Andrew Kailembo two weeks ago to bring the matter up in a meeting of the African Union’s Labour & Social Affairs Ministers in Ethiopia. Days afterwards the matter was discussed at the ILO African regional meeting of governments, employers and trade unions. Lomosi says the process is reinvigorating an interest in an agreement signed last year between the ITUC and International Organisation of Employees (IOE) to request the G8 working group.

Industrialised country unions chiming in: The momentum has now captured the support of industrialised country unions (Canada, Norway, Sweden & The Netherlands) that have also lobbied their German embassies. International sector unions in the education, energy, mines, public services and transportation fields2 have also joined in. Last week the German trade union centre DGB again reinforced the point while addressing the G8 Sherpas during a Civil Society consultation in Bonn.

Campaign Targets: Environment, Health & Labour Ministers

Lomosi said the UN CSD effort is part of Global Union campaign that aims to strengthen action taken in the world’s workplaces to address the pandemic.

She says the CSD government delegations are in the best position to defend the need for better target setting and monitoring of AIDS because of their mandate from the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) to deal with AIDS as a cross-cutting linkage to health, environment and poverty.

Last February unions delivered a similar letter to Environment Ministers attending the annual meeting of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi and Lomosi says they will do the same with Health Ministers in two weeks time in Geneva when they meet at the World Health Organisation (WHO). Unions also aim to organise a special communication to Labour Ministers.

The focus on HIV/AIDS is part of a broader approach by the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC) to address economic, climate change and African development issues with the G8 this year.

“However Global Unions have also chosen to lobby on this single issue because it sheds light on the suffering and death that result form governments making promises about AIDS without follow-up.”
Lomosi and the AIDS team at the CSD is part of 50-member trade union delegation attending the CSD in New York that is meeting to recommend policy on industrial development, energy, climate change and air pollution.
1 Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South
Africa and Uganda.
2 Have requested their affiliates to consider lobbying German embassies: Education International (EI), International
Federation of Chemical, Mine & General Workers’ Unions Energy, Chemicals (ICEM), International
Transport Federation (ITF), and Public Services International (PSI).

Lucien Royer
International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)
Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC)
In New York: Cell (336) 7769 9429 or Hotel 1(212) 355 0300
15, Rue Laperouse - 75016 paris, France
Tel (331) 5537 3737 Fax 4754 9828
royer@tuac.org
www.tuac.org