Transitions: The Rights. Respect. Responsibility.^® Campaign
Volume 14, No. 1, October 2001

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By Naina Kaur Dhingra, Member, International Youth Leadership Council, Advocates for Youth

My father, a Republican, once asked why I hadn't picked the environment or saving whales as my "cause." My reply was that I had too much of a social conscience not to be affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Since the age of 14, I have been involved with the issue of HIV/AIDS as a peer educator and, more recently, as a member of Advocates for Youth's International Youth Leadership Council.

The International Youth Leadership Council began in October 2000, with a mission to educate policy makers, the media, and the American public about the importance of increasing U.S. funding for global HIV/AIDS education and services and for international family planning. This June, Council members, Mai Pham, Sean Barry, and I, had the opportunity to attend the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS (UNGASS) together with Marcela Howell, Advocates' Director of Public Affairs.

The week I spent at UNGASS may have been the most emotionally, physically, and mentally draining of my life. A sense of urgency surrounded everything participants did. Emotions ran high, frustrations were apparent, and compromise was difficult to achieve. Mai, Sean, and I, together with other youth attending UNGASS, became oblivious to anything else.

At the preparatory meeting in May, I had been the only young person to represent a non-governmental organization (NGO). This time, there were about 65 young people from all over the world, including 20 youth activists from Africa that were sponsored by the United Nations Development Fund for Women and by the United Nations Children's Fund. Together, we formed a youth caucus to discuss the ways in which we could make the presence of young people felt, both at UNGASS and in the draft Declaration of Commitment. As debate raged amongst delegates to the General Assembly (who had not agreed upon final language for the Declaration), we worked as a unified bloc to highlight the youth-specific dimensions of HIV/AIDS. Our collaboration was as diverse and intense as that of the General Assembly. Young people from official country delegations and NGOs from South Africa, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe, Argentina, Jamaica, and the U.S. worked late into the night to develop consensus, a true lesson in international cooperation.

Member states were at an impasse on two major areas very important to young people —the naming of vulnerable groups and the human rights of women. The naming of vulnerable groups became a major issue of contention, with the Rio Group (Latin American countries) battling for full inclusion of all groups, such as men who have sex with men, sex workers and their clients, and injection drugs users. However, many Islamic countries and the Vatican objected to naming these groups. Although there were no objections to naming 'young people' a vulnerable group, this was a critical issue for us because young people are also included in other vulnerable populations, such as sex workers and young men who have sex with men. Honestly acknowledging those most at risk is one of the greatest challenges to ending the pandemic

The second controversial issue for the General Assembly centered on the empowerment of women. We found it extremely unsettling that this was an issue. The youth caucus felt that the empowerment of women was crucial because young girls are disproportionately infected with HIV in the developing world due to a lack of information and a lack of control over their own bodies.

In the end, the youth caucus decided to create a Youth Position Paper to address the most critical youth-related issues omitted from the Declaration of Commitment. Unlike the UN Declaration, the Youth Position Paper included a list of highly vulnerable populations. The Paper focused on issues of youth leadership and youth empowerment; prevention, treatment, and access to care; the socioeconomic impact of HIV/AIDS; and human rights. The Youth Position Paper stated that young people "must be involved in initiating, designing, and implementing programs and strategies to fight HIV/AIDS" and that programs for youth must not be initiated, designed, and implemented by adults alone. The United Nations may talk about young people and HIV, but youth still do not have a voice that reflects both the impact of the epidemic on our age group and the role we have in determining how to reach our own generation effectively.

The Youth Position Paper is a tool young people can use to lobby for change in governmental policies that negatively affect young people. Even more importantly, it is a tool to mobilize our peers around the world. The Paper is a call to action to young people to change the world if adults do not have the courage and the conviction to do so.

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Transitions (ISSN 1097-1254) © 2001, is a quarterly publication of Advocates for Youth—Helping young people make safe and responsible decisions about sex. For permission to reprint, contact Transitions' editor at 202.419.3420.

Editor: Sue Alford