Brazil rejects U.S. AIDS cash over policyGus Cairns, Gay.com U.K.
Wednesday, May 4, 2005 / 05:39 PM
Brazil has become the first country to turn down grants totaling $40 million from the United States, in protest against U.S. demands that the funds be used for abstinence education, not outreach to sex workers.
The $40 million was the bulk of a $48 million grant which was due to run till 2008.
Brazil can afford to turn down the Bush dollars. Unlike some poorer countries, it has an anti-AIDS program that is largely self-financed, and less than 2 percent of its money comes directly from the U.S. government.
The U.S. money was originally supposed to include $190,000 for eight sex workers' support groups. Gabriela Leite, co-ordinator of the Brazilian Network of Sex Professionals, said that they had hammered out a 50-page agreement with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) that the money would go only to AIDS education and prevention, but the deal fell apart when they refused to include a written clause condemning prostitution.
Brazil's anti-HIV program is seen as a model for the developing world. It has kept its HIV rate down to about 0.6 percent, when it was widely expected to be at least double that by 2005. It's success has been attributed to a combination of free anti-HIV drugs for everyone who needs them, widespread condom distribution and open and accepting communication with prostitutes, gay men and drug users. Prostitution is legal in Brazil, and the age of consent for everyone -- regardless of sexuality -- is 14.
"We can't control HIV with principles that are ... theological, fundamentalist and Shiite," said Pedro Chequer, director of Brazil's AIDS program. He condemned "interference that harms the Brazilian policy regarding diversity, ethical principles and human rights."
Brazil's former Health Minister Paulo Teixeira told the United Nations Commission on Population and Development that the United States' preferred policies of sexual abstinence until marriage and fidelity in marriage were less effective than condom distribution.
"Based on international experiences, today there is no evidence whatsoever that moral recommendations, such as abstinence and fidelity, have any impact that might prevent infection and curb the epidemic," he told the U.N.
In the United States, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., has condemned the Bush government requirement that any AIDS organization receiving U.S. federal funds sign up to a written pledge opposing commercial sex work, even if the work it does in developing countries has nothing to do with prostitution.
Waxman said such a declaration was against the constitutional right to free speech. But Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., urged a tightening of U.S. policy. He said that one-third of the U.S. Presidential Executive Provision for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was supposed to go to abstinence programs, yet the money mainly went not to faith-based groups but to "organizations long-associated with the social marketing of condoms. This must not continue."
