The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) funds prevention, treatment and care programs in over 120 countries and 15 focus countries. PEPFAR legally requires that a maximum of 20% of funds be spent on prevention, and of these, 33% are mandated to be spent on abstinence-only-until marriage programs. The ideological basis for the United States government’s funding requirement is in direct contradiction to the goals advanced by the World Association of Sexology’s Montreal Declaration on “Sexual Health for the Millennium.” PEPFAR policies are changing health programming in all aid countries and undermining multilateral efforts to promote sexual and reproductive rights. The U.S. government has singled-out “faith based organizations” as particularly qualified to implement abstinence-until-marriage programs. These faith based organizations do not represent a wide range of faith perspectives. Instead, there are a disproportionate number representing the radical right, evangelical, Christian base that also makes up the President’s political base. This presentation will examine PEPFAR’s abstinence-only-until-marriage funding requirements as a vehicle for the Bush Administration to promote a conservative movement that opposes a wide range of sexual and reproductive health and rights in the guise of humanitarian HIV prevention. Examples illustrating how PEPFAR policies are hindering the promotion of sexual rights set forth in the World Association of Sexology’s Universal Declaration of Sexual Rights will be drawn from the 15 focus countries. In particular, the presentation will examine how the promotion of this conservative movement through PEPFAR funding has negatively impacted the lives of women and youth. The implementation of PEPFAR in these 15 focus countries has been detailed in our SIECUS publication, PEPFAR Country Profiles. This publication has become an invaluable resource for policymakers and advocates, and made SIECUS a leader in building support for a change to PEPFAR’s conservative agenda.
Conflict of Interest: None disclosed
Financial Support/Funding: None disclosed
Sydney, Australia, April 2007
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