TransNews Annex

"Why do sex workers do what they do?," ask AIDS researchers - AP/Mainichi

Mainichi Daily News Features Full Report

"Why do sex workers do what they do?," ask AIDS researchers

(Photo1) Participants of AIDS walk rally hold banners during in Kobe on Sunday. The Asia-Pacific region has the world's second-highest infection rate after sub-Saharan Africa, and the armed forces themselves present a particularly high-risk group due to their mobility, according to a meeting of military officials at the Seventh International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific in Kobe.


KOBE -- A young homosexual man in Sydney may sell his body for the evening because he's short on cash and likes life on the edge.

An underage Nepalese girl works in an Indian brothel because her relatives sold her to a trafficker.

The reasons behind sex work in the Asia-Pacific are as diverse as the region itself.

Understanding that is vital to protecting sex workers and preventing them from spreading HIV/AIDS in a region where paid sex is a main driver behind the world's second-highest HIV infection rate, said researchers Sunday at the Seventh International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific in Kobe.

In a recent study of 1,400 gay men in Sydney, one in five said they had at some point been paid for sex, said Dr. Garrett Prestage from Australia's University of New South Wales.

(Photo 2) Participants of an AIDS walk rally hold banners during in Kobe on Sunday.


Often they were younger men with low incomes who practiced "fairly opportunistic circumstantial payment for sex," he said.

"The men who are paid for sex are usually more adventurous sexually and in other ways," said Prestage. "They tend to ... party hard and play on the edge _ they're risk takers."

Most used condoms in the context of sex work but had unprotected sex with casual partners, complicating efforts to combat HIV transmission, Prestage said.

"Reinforcing condom use during sex work is important but it isn't sufficient for these men. They also need to be targeted on the basis of the risks they take in their gay lifestyles," he said.

The Asia-Pacific region is home to more than half the world's population and its people cross the demographic, socio-economic and religious spectrum.

Curbing the spread of HIV/AIDS among some 200,000 Nepalese women estimated to be working in India's sex industry poses different challenges, said U.K.-based researcher Bibha B. Bhurtyal.

(Photo 3) Participants of AIDS walk rally hold banners during in Kobe on Sunday.


Among these women, knowledge of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases was very low, she said.

"Most believed that STIs (sexually transmitted infections) are avoided by staying clean," Bhurtyal said.

Even those aware of the risks are often in too weak of a position to demand the use of condoms, she added. (By Natalie Obiko Pearson, Associated Press Writer)

July 3, 2005

Fundamentalism seen hurting AIDS effort - Japan Times

World's children demand action on poverty from G8 - Reuters

World's children demand action on poverty from G8
Sun Jul 3, 2005 6:26 PM BST
By Jeremy Lovell

(Photo) Children from some of the world's poorest nations made a plea to the leaders of the richest countries as they prepare for their Scottish summit -- act now to end child prostitution, child labour and trafficking. In this picture, Girls carry water from a well at a village in southern Niger, July 2, 2005. The worst drought in years has left 3.6 million people short of food in the West African country. Already counted among the poorest of the world's poor, Niger's farmers simply cannot afford to buy what is still on offer. Their children, in ones and twos, are beginning to die, for want of a few cents worth of food. Poverty is killing them. As the Group of Eight industrialised countries meet in Scotland next week to discuss ways to help Africa, Niger's emaciated children provide a case study of rich world inaction. REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly


DUNBLANE (Reuters) - Children from some of the world's poorest nations made a plea to the leaders of the richest countries as they prepare for their Scottish summit -- act now to end child prostitution, child labour and trafficking.

"Now is the moment to help poor children because we have suffered too much. I want the G8 leaders to make it stop. It is time to listen to the children," 17-year-old Assiatou Drame told reporters on Sunday.

A refugee from Sierra Leone now living in Guinea, Drame told a news conference at the C8 Children's Forum she had never been to school and had had to work all her life.

Setting out an agenda for the leaders of the Group of Eight industrialised nations, the boys and girls from Africa, Asia and Latin American were joined by others from Europe at the small Scottish town of Dunblane.

Actor Ewan McGregor, an ambassador for the United Nations' Children's Fund (UNICEF) which organised the C8 Forum, praised their passion and involvement.

"Their experiences and opinions of issues like war, poverty and the rise of HIV/AIDS gives compelling and real evidence of why we all need to call on the G8 leaders to make child poverty history," he said.

"They are the ones who will inherit the results of the decisions the G8 leaders are going to make. They are the ones we need to listen to," he added.

The leaders of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Japan and Russia meet amid tight security in Gleneagles, some 40 miles (65 km) northwest of Edinburgh from Wednesday to Friday next week.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, the current G8 president, has made tackling global warming and ending the triple curse of debt, disease and poverty in Africa the key goals of the summit.

TRAPPED IN POVERTY

The Live 8 rock concerts and a march by 200,000 people through the Scottish capital on Saturday to support the "Make Poverty History" campaign have shown the G8 leaders how much people have taken the issue to heart.

One child dies a preventable death every three seconds somewhere in the world, according to UNICEF.

Some 180 million children are trapped in the worst forms of child labour, 1.2 million are trafficked each year and two million are involved in the sex industry.

Some of the stories the children swapped with each other were harrowing.

Paola Rospigliozi, a 17-year-old, said poverty was so rife in her native Bolivia that mothers sometimes hired out their babies to other women so they could use them to beg on the streets, or they sold them into prostitution or for organ transplants.

Aminata Palmer, a feisty 11-year-old from Sierra Leone, said she had witnessed first hand the exploitation of children in her country which is ranked by the United Nations as the poorest in the world.

"We want to see an end to child exploitation. That is why we are here," she said. "I want to say to the G8 if you fail to react we will never forgive you."

Asians face ‘silent tsunami', says UN - Financial Times

World / Asia-Pacific
Asians face ‘silent tsunami', says UN
By Frances Williams in Geneva, Mariko Sanchanta in Tokyo and agencies
Published: July 3 2005 18:19 | Last updated: July 3 2005 18:19 - Financial Times

Asia is witnessing the fastest growth in Aids cases in the world and the epidemic will gather pace even more rapidly in the next five years unless governments take action, the United Nations Aids agency said at the weekend.

Speaking at a conference in Kobe, Japan, J.V.R. Prasado Rao, director of UNAids' regional support team, said governments needed to view Aids as a natural disaster on the scale of the tsunamis that hit south Asia in December.

“The virus doesn't kill hundreds of thousands at a thunderous stroke like the tsunami, and it doesn't provide vivid television pictures.

“It is more like a silent tsunami,” he said.

A UNAids report, released at the conference, said 8.2m people were infected with HIV in the Asia-Pacific region, the biggest total anywhere after sub-Saharan Africa. East Asia has the world's fastest rate of infection, owing to the rapid spread of HIV among injecting drug users and sex workers in China, Indonesia and Vietnam.

A “business-as-usual” approach could see 12m people newly infected with HIV in the region over the next five years, the report warned. It urged countries in the region to scale up prevention and care programmes. An estimated $5bn (€4bn, £3bn) will need to be spent in 2007, three times the $1.6bn now projected.

Peter Piot, executive director of UNAids, said: “The risk of Aids spreading further in Asia and the Pacific is now higher than ever.”

Although HIV infection rates are still very low, in such a populous region that translates into millions of infected people, the report points out.

India, with fewer than 1 per cent of adults affected, has more than 5m people with HIV, nearly as many as South Africa where more than one in five are affected.

In Japan, there were more than 1,000 new HIV infections in 2004, the biggest-ever yearly increase, while the total number of HIV-positive individuals exceeded 10,000.

Although the numbers are still relatively small, inadequate public awareness and education could lead to much larger increases. While HIV infections are still mainly confined to vulnerable groups, conditions are ripe for a more general spread of the disease, the report suggests. It says 5 to 10 per cent of men in the Asia-Pacific region buy sex and are thus at risk not only of contracting HIV but passing it on to their partners.

Fundamentalism seen hurting AIDS effort - Japan Times

Fundamentalism seen hurting AIDS effort
By ERIC JOHNSTON
Staff writer

(Photo) Participants in a rally Sunday in Kobe, where the 7th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific is being held, hold a banner calling for safer conditions for sex workers.


KOBE -- Religious fundamentalism that rejects condom use and scientific treatment of people with HIV/AIDS is threatening to reverse a quarter century of progress in battling the disease, participants at an international conference warned Sunday.

"There is a new AIDS order emerging in the world today. It is resulting in the dilution of science and scientific methods of treating AIDS and the diminution of human rights of those who are HIV positive," said Anand Grover, an Indian lawyer who works with patients in that country.

He was speaking at one of the symposiums in Kobe for the 7th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific.

"This new order puts a gag on information and services governments provide, like condoms and needles, stifles human rights concerns, and blocks public health measures to change behavior while preaching that you shouldn't have sex or do drugs. It encourages stiff penalties and punishments and propagates antiquated morals to control behavior," Grover said, citing both the U.S. and India as examples of countries where such an order is most visibly emerging.

"We hear lots of talk on morality, but people are forgetting that AIDS is a health problem that affects all levels of society. But there is no room for ideology in developing AIDS policies," said Nafis Sadik, a Pakistani woman who is a special adviser to the U.N. Secretary General and special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Asia and the Pacific.

In the U.S., the past several years have seen much funding for AIDS prevention go to groups with a fundamentalist Christian agenda that emphasizes abstaining from homosexual or drug activities. Governments of other countries like India have faced pressure from fundamentalist Hindu and Muslim groups to curb the availability of condoms and to stop assistance policies for those affected by the epidemic.

Yet in Iran, which is under Muslim law, the courts have issued rulings over the past few years that make it easier to offer treatment to people who contracted HIV/AIDS through intravenous drug use, according to Grover.

In 2001, Iran's Health Ministry publicly endorsed harm reduction and offered needles, as well as the use of a drug called methadone, which can help slow the spread of the HIV. A local court ruled in 2005 that the use of the drug, although forbidden under Muslim law, may be permitted if it saves lives.

Constance Carrino, director of the office of HIV/AIDS at USAID, said it has been the policy of the U.S. government since 2003 to focus on prevention techniques.

Speaking to an audience clearly hostile to U.S. policy on HIV/AIDS, Carrino said the U.S. has provided information to people in 15 countries around the world on the risks of engaging in unsafe sex and to drug users on the risks of sharing needles.

The Japan Times: July 4, 2005

米連邦最高裁中道派判事が引退表明 (東京 2005/07/04朝刊)

米連邦最高裁中道派判事が引退表明 (東京 2005/07/04朝刊)

　【ワシントン＝松川貴】米連邦最高裁のオコーナー判事が一日、突然の引退を表明したことで、後任判事の指名が今後の米国政治の大きな焦点となってきた。ブッシュ政権（共和党）では最初の最高裁判事指名で、民主党は保守派判事の指名を警戒。その場合は承認権を持つ上院で抵抗する構えだ。

　最高裁判事九人（オコーナー氏を含む）の色分けは、保守三人、リベラル四人、中道派二人（ワシントン・ポスト紙）。

　女性初の最高裁判事となったオコーナー氏は中道派。妊娠中絶裁判では中絶を憲法上の権利として容認。その一方、大接戦となった二〇〇〇年の大統領選では結果的にブッシュ大統領の当選を後押しするなど、その時によって判断が左右に動き、判決のキャスチングボートを握ってきた。

　保守派のレンキスト最高裁長官（判事）も近く引退する見通しで、オコーナー氏の後任に保守派を指名するかどうかで最高裁の色分けは一変する。

　このため、民主党はオコーナー判事の後任に中道派を指名するようにブッシュ大統領に要請。民主党のドッド上院議員は「オコーナー判事を指名したレーガン大統領は間違いなく最保守派だった。しかし、指名した判事は反対ゼロで承認された。それが標準というものだ」と、ブッシュ大統領をけん制した。

　しかし、中絶禁止や同性婚の禁止を求める宗教右派の要請で、ブッシュ政権は同性婚の禁止を合衆国憲法に盛り込むことを目指しており、その最大の関門が憲法の番人、最高裁。そのため、保守派判事を指名するとの見方が有力だ。

　最高裁判事の指名承認を行う上院は共和党が優勢。このため、民主党のケネディ上院議員は「国民の権利や自由を縮小させるような判事を指名すれば、国民は民主党に反対するように期待するだろうし、われわれは反対する」と宣言。

　フィリバスター（長時間演説による審議妨害）などの議会戦術さえも辞さず、保守派判事の指名に対し、徹底抗戦の構えを早くもみせている。