well, it's something.

sometimes, you don't quite know what to do with information. with facts. with statistics.

I just finished reading the book, Race Against Time by Stephen Lewis, the former UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. It was lying around the house I'm staying at in Waterloo and, what with having little to do, I picked it up and began reading. The reading of this particular book follows closely behind the reading of another fantastic book; one that I must read again: 28 Stories [of AIDS in Africa]. Okay, so it's not a fantastic book. Well, it is. But it's a book that brings the statistical fact that 28,000,000 (that's million) people in Africa live with HIV/AIDS down to an individual level. This woman has HIV, this husband does. This child.

And yet, in this world so far removed from the one in which the epidemic exists, they remain just as they are written: stories. Stories of survival, despair, and hope. Stories of another time, another place, another life. If we choose it to be so. For these stories are of today, and are of our world, and are taking place in our lifetime.

Still, it seems we do nothing. And by 'we', I do not necessarily mean you. Or I. As individuals it is difficult to put a dent into an issue as complex as AIDS in Africa. The issue itself, at the core is not the problem. There are 28 million humans living with HIV/AIDS in Africa. That part is simple to understand. What is difficult for the individual to understand and change is Western government policy, apathy, budgetary commitments, and backsliding. Granted, governments have a responsibility to its own people that it must commit to. And even there, it fails. What government does not have a single complaint against it from one of the thousands of sectors of it's society? But perhaps, what we fail to realize, what I have come to understand further through reading this book, and perhaps what the point of this post is this: our governments have made commitments to the developing world. Commitments that it continually neglects, postpones, and vacillates endlessly on.

There are a few links that I have put up on the side of my blog. They have been there for some time, with the expectation that one might stumble upon it, scroll the cursor over and click. I will now emphasize a few of them. 1) The UN Millenium Goals. Read them to understand what our governments have jointly committed to doing to improve millions of lives in the developing world. 2) Human Rights Watch. Understand a little about what's happening to human lives here and around the world. 3) Micah Challenge. Sign the Micah Challenge to hold the UN and it's member states to it's commitments with the Millenium Goals. If you're not a fan of the Micah Challenge, go to Make Poverty History. 4) Free the Drugs. I was told about this one recently, and am not positive about it's validity so it's not on the sidebar yet. Read it to understand what it's about, and sign it if you understand and agree.

I don't attest to know all the ins and outs of the UN, it's policy-makers or it's member states. Nor do I know a lot about the epidemic of HIV/AIDS in Africa and other developing nations. What does seem to be consistent, however, in the small amount of books I have read that mention these things, is that not enough is being done. And that profits take precedence over humanity. With that in mind, I end with the final paragraph of Lewis' book. I was recently asked if I am a pacifist. Perhaps, for this reason alone, I will become one:

In 2005, the world will pass the trillion-dollar mark in the expenditure, annually, on arms. We're fighting for $50 billion annually for foreign aid for Africa: the military total outstrips human need by 20 to 1. Can someone please explain to me our contemporary balance of values?