A global scandal: secular state, religious ambition

Greetings from the mundane bohemia of suburban London...

In the course of my research for the next posting (‘Publish and be Damned – Part II), I discovered some astonishing information that warrants a posting all of its own. It concerns American foreign policy in Uganda (and beyond) under the Bush administration.

PEPFAR was (and is) a US Government funded overseas aid organisation. Originally set up by academic heavy-weight George W. Bush (2003), it was intended to assist in the global prevention of communicable diseases such as HIV-AIDS.

However, PEPFAR has been widely criticised for its disproportionate funding of abstinence and fidelity programmes whilst discouraging the use of condoms. Critics have included the HIV Medicine Association, Infectious Diseases Society of America, ActionAid International, CARE and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

AVERT (an international HIV-AIDS charity), state on their website that PEPFAR has been:

‘…channeling large sums of money through pro-abstinence and even anti-condom organisations that are faith-based, and believe sexual abstinence should be the central pillar of the fight against HIV. Abstinence-only is also being encouraged by evangelical churches within Uganda, and by the First Lady, Janet Museveni.’

According to UN Special Envoy for HIV-AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, PEPFAR’s emphasis on abstinence as opposed to condom distribution was:

‘…a distortion of the preventive apparatus and is resulting in great damage and undoubtedly will cause significant numbers of infections which should never have occurred’.

And:

‘There is no question that the condom crisis in Uganda [2005 shortages] is being driven and exacerbated by PEPFAR and by the extreme policies that the administration in the United States is now pursuing’.

At the time, the European Union issued a statement that’s widely viewed as a criticism of PEPFAR policies, stating that it was:

‘…profoundly concerned about the resurgence of partial or incomplete messages on HIV prevention which are not grounded in evidence and have limited effectiveness.’

PEPFAR’s other policies (during the Bush administration) included the ‘Global Gag Rule’. This prevented the allocation of funds to organisations that offered advice or counselling on abortion issues. Paradoxically, PEPFAR’s official policy on birth control was to deny condoms to the general populace and distribute only to ‘high risk’ groups - such as sex workers.

However, under PEPFAR’s Leadership Act 2003, organisations that didn’t demonstrate explicit opposition to prostitution were denied funding. Obviously, there’s a glaring contradiction here - how can agencies distribute condoms to sex workers when they’re duty-bound to oppose them on principle and in practice? (What might Nineteen Eighty-Four author George Orwell have made of this ‘doublespeak’, I wonder?)

This particular bone of contention led to Brazil declining a $40M funding programme from PEPFAR in 2005 on the grounds that it would compromise the effectiveness of its HIV-AIDS prevention programme.

Among the nine faith-based beneficiaries of PEPFAR funding are:

Samaritan’s Purse - which describes itself as an ‘...evangelical Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world’.

[In other words, a simpering hill billy tries to cram a bible up your ass while you’re rendered defenseless by malaria and now rapidly losing the will to live.]

Catholic Relief Services - received the third largest amount of PEPFAR funds in 2007 ($103 Million of US taxpayer's cash). Its mission is to ‘assist the poor and disadvantaged, leveraging the teachings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to alleviate human suffering…’ In practical terms this translates into a refusal to promote or distribute life-saving condoms for reasons of antihuman papal dogma - even in countries with HIV-AIDS epidemics.

[Once again, the Pope’s emissaries provide dubious health and safety advice on matters of penile attire. Following on, there’s a papal embargo on hard hats for construction workers, gloves for Antarctic explorers and body armour for soldiers.]

The fact that PEPFAR appears to extol the ideologies of the religious far-right doesn’t just raise questions about its underlying agenda on the world stage. It also goes some way to impugn the credibility of the US Government (during the Bush administration) as a constitutionally secular body, does it not? After all, is it the purpose of a secular government aid agency to fund overseas bible classes?

Is it the purpose of a secular government aid agency to save souls…or save lives?

For further reading please see: http://www.avert.org/