Unions Call on German Minister’s Help For New G8 Working Group on AIDS

He said that unions, business, church leaders, the World AIDS Campaign (WAC) and NGOs are united in their call for a Working Group. This is the single most important request about AIDS that relates to G8 accountability to deliver on promises about universal access, health care system strengthening, and the urgent need for action on the special needs of women, girls and other vulnerable groups.

G8 takes positive steps in response to trade union request
Leather was responding to a letter from the German Minister, saying that her government would present the findings of its own review to the G8 and would also discuss the need for additional monitoring exercises for AIDS. He was also encouraged by the G8’s current draft communiqué which recognises the importance of UNAIDS “ to monitor progress towards the goal of universal access…”
“Even though UNAIDS’s responsibility for assessing progress on HIV/AIDS for the UN General Assembly is not new, mainstreaming the UNAIDS findings within the G8 process annually and acting on them would be”.

He said he wanted the G8 to turn last year’s words in the communiqué into action when they said that confronting the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been one of their top priorities for many years. “The G8 could prove this by putting into place an ongoing mechanism within the Summit process to review the status of their commitment to universal access and the actions they are taking to live up to it. A Working Group would best serve that purpose. “

Meanwhile, at their recent 8 May meeting with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, unions from the most industrialized countries were unified behind the statement to the G8, expressed by the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC): “HIV/AIDS should be included each year on the G8 agenda. Establishing a G8 high level or expert group supported by UNAIDS and its cosponsors to facilitate the process is necessary to ensure continuity and progress”. Large international union federations from the education, energy, transport and service sectors have also joined the call.

Poverty, public health, environmental protection & social cohesion are at stake
Leather reported that the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and its African Regional Organisation (AFRO) had both supported the TUAC call yet trade unions in more than 15 African countries went further and contacted their German embassies directly to show their support for a Working Group because they know that inadequate progress of G8 commitments on AIDS continues to foster poverty and misery in their countries.”

He stated that Global Unions had undertaken the widest-ever awareness raising campaign by taking their message to environment, health and labour Ministers of all governments attending various international meetings since the last G8, showing them how untracked AIDS promises have given rise to the further spread of the disease, poverty, and a worsening of service delivery in their respective fields of work. “The G8 monitoring and reporting deficiency is bad news for sustainable development, bad news for the environment, bad news for public health and bad news for social cohesion,” .

“We need to take every opportunity to keep the pressure on the forthcoming G8 to be accountable for past promises because the lives of workers, their families and communities are at stake”.

For further information, contact:

Lucien Royer
International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)
Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC)
15, Rue Laperouse - 75016 paris, France
Tel (331) 5537 3737 Fax 4754 9828
royer@tuac.org