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With World AIDS Orphans day coming up one month from today, an occasion that resonates deeply within anyone touched by international adoption as I wrote in an earlier post today, Thabo Mbeki’s recent comments
that began with the trite, “An orphan is an orphan” line and went on from there sounded especially off point, and downright offensive to some.
Often obtuse when it comes to issues of HIV-AIDS, the South African President did nothing but cloud an immense issue when he compared individual parent-less children and insisted, “We can’t have a situation where there are five hungry children and you take two and go and feed them and leave the other three …”.
This drum that must be constantly banged, and banged loudly, is nowhere about ‘five hungry children’, but about the growing legion … the exponentially growing legion … of AIDS orphans, a legion that could soon take over entire areas of Mr. Mbeki’s own country.
Of course children are orphaned by other causes than AIDS, but I’m guessing that if every fifteen seconds brought the death of a parent by car accidents, there would be some major attention paid and drastic action involved in anything to do with automobiles.
By not addressing the monstrous scope of the AIDS pandemic in regard to the swath of children left in the wake, by doing the ‘an orphan is an orphan’ two-step, the President has attempted to dilute the impact of what could easily be said to be the biggest challenge his country faces. If by doing so his intention is to level a playing field … and he does criticize donor organizations for preferentially funding NGOs serving AIDS orphans … potential effects of his stance could be very dangerous.
Disagreeing in public places about statements that are incorrect or misleading and educating as wide an audience as possible is part of what World AIDS Orphans Day is all about.
If you would like to inform and involve your own public officials, you can download a proclamation your mayor or other local governmental authority can put out in your community to honor World AIDS Orphans Day and make your town one of the many participating.
The US government lends its support, as you can see in this release from last year announcing observance of World AIDS Orphans Day.
Erin on the Transracial Adoption Blog posted on the 2006 event, as well. You can read her posts here and here.
Oh they make me so proud. Like his wonderful statement a couple of years ago that there is no link between HIV and AIDS. Or our little stall at last year’s AIDS conference in Canada, where South Africa was preparing the battle against HIV/AIDS with lots and lots of beetroot and garlic. Way to make us look like a bunch of morons.