1/24/05
Monitoring HIV in U.N. Peacekeepers 

BENNY AVNI 

Mr. Avni covers the United Nations for The New York Sun. He can be reached at bavni@nysun.com. 


   Recent deaths among Namibian troops stationed as U.N. peacekeepers in Liberia raise an issue that has haunted the U.N. peacekeeping operation, and that could be fixed with a change of policy. 
   My Turtle Bay sources tell me that three Namibian members of the force stationed in Liberia died of AIDS recently. An official who requested that his name not be used confirmed only that there were some fatalities in the Namibian contingent in Liberia and that the cause was “not hostile action.” 
   The United Nations, an organization that professes to be working hard to fight the AIDS pandemic in Africa and around the world, does not have a mandatory policy of HIV testing for its peacekeepers. 
   After a floor fight in the Security Council in 2000, in which several members — including America — fought for an AIDS testing policy and lost, the U.N. rationalizes the lack of mandatory testing.Testing, they say, is “voluntary” and is left to the discretion of the nations that contribute troops to peacekeeping missions; in many cases it is not required. 
   In addition, the U.N. has no policy forbidding fraternization between peacekeepers and the local population. The result is a situation that was best described in 2000 by Richard Holbrooke, the American ambassador at the time, as “the extraordinary irony and anomaly that peacekeepers coming into a place to solve one problem end up causing another.” 
   The suspicion that those who came to spread peace in Eritrea spread AIDS instead led Eritrean leaders to ask the Security Council in 2001 to test U.N. troops.The council refused and Eritrea decided to end its cooperation with the peacekeeping force. 
   In the case of war-torn Liberia,which receives help from U.N. peacekeeping forces, the AIDS epidemic is worse in the countries that many peacekeepers come from, like Namibia. According to the most recent U.N. numbers, 16,000 people died of AIDS in Namibia in 2003, compared with only 7,200 people in Liberia. That same year, 5.9% of the adult population in Liberia lived with HIV, while in Namibia the rate was as high as 21.3%. 
   In fact,according to a recent study by the International Crisis Group, nations with high or near-high AIDS prevalence contribute 37% of all U.N. peacekeepers. And as the recent scandal known as “sex-for-food” in the Democratic Republic of Congo has demonstrated, they might end up spreading it in host nations. 
   Last week the U.N. sent to Congo a new group of 20 investigators, most of them women. A recently completed investigation by the U.N.’s professional in-house watchdog into the Congo scandal was unable to substantiate cases against more than eight people, even though there were some 150 complaints of sexual abuse of girls as young as 12. The new group is looking into allegations that have arisen since then. 
   “If you are going to send young men away, they are going to have sex,” the New York director of the Joint United Nations Program HIV/AIDS Desmond Johns, told me recently.The U.N. stresses education, condom use, etc. When it comes to HIV testing, however, it points to what Mr. Johns called “human rights and consent” of the troops, which leaves testing to the discretion of contributing nations. The U.N. also believes that being HIV positive does not affect the peacekeepers’ ability to perform their duties. 
   Militaries in nations like China, Russia, and America are less liberal, stressing public health and telling those who want to join that they need to be tested first. One nation with high AIDS rates with a similar policy is South Africa, which contributes many troops to U.N. peacekeeping operations, but first assures they are not HIV positive. 
   A recent internal U.N. study, prepared by the AIDS adviser to the peacekeeping department Roxanne Bazergan, notes that South Africa tested some 800 potential peacekeepers recently, when it was preparing to send 93 soldiers to Congo. Nearly 90% were HIV positive. Since then, South Africa has supplied enough non-infected troops to become the eighth-largest contributor of peacekeeping troops. 
   What the current policy overlooks is that contributing nations want to send troops on peacekeeping missions. It adds to their national prestige and, in the case of the poorer African nations where HIV rates are the highest, it helps enrich their national budget. It would not be too much to ask in return for mandatory HIV testing. It would help correct a state of affairs by which rather than helping in the fight against AIDS, the U.N. may be contributing to the spread of it.