Essentially, HIV/AIDS is a lethal illness that threatens the life of those who develop AIDS and who do not enjoy access to life-saving medicines. As a result, the average life expectancy in some African countries is likely to drop by as much as 20 to 30 years over the next decades. On the future years the life expectancy in many countries could even be lower than at the beginning of the twentieth century, to no small extent due to the impact of HIV/AIDS.
Beyond these, HIV/AIDS also has a excess of direct and indirect human security access to those families and communities affected by the illness. Unlike many other illnesses related with old age, AIDS-related illnesses affect persons at a much younger and more productive age. As a result of these, there is an important relationship, for example, between high HIV prevalence rates and levels of food security.
As persons become too ill they may become unable to provide or acquire nourishment for their families, or be unable to tend to the fields in order to secure adequate levels of food. They may even have to sell off their possessions or livestock in order to compensate for this lack of income. As individuals become too ill to maintain steady employment, and families face additional medical and funeral costs due to the illness, their economic security too becomes adversely affected.
The human security of individuals may also be affected more easy, through social stigma and exclusion, which can manifest itself in violent attacks on persons known to be living with HIV. (Stefan, 2006)
In my opinion the attention of International organizations, governments, non governmental organizations focusing at daily lives of ordinary individuals rather than ensuring the survival of states is the result of their decisions.
In the real life people confront new threats of human security in their everyday life in a globalizing world it’s a real risk in the contemporary conditions in which they are confronting. As it is said the human security is related with the survival of the state as a whole one, even if it attempts to pass the borders of it.
- HIV AIDS , New form of security threat
More recently, the enormity of the epidemic – and the need to focus political attention on its implications – has led to some pressure to re conceptualize HIV-AIDS as a political/security issue.
HIV/AIDS is a socio-economic problem and a political problem that has reached the proportion of an international crisis. It threatens to destroy nations and continents. (Mankahlana, 2000)
The spread of and the response to AIDS is itself a product of globalization, with dislocations caused by rapid population movements, urbanization, the rapid spread of ideas and information, and the changes in government policies, often as a result of policies imposed by external organizations, all relevant factors.
According to the statement that Mark Malloch Brown made in the meeting of Security Council HIV/AIDS rips across social structures, targeting a young continent’s young people, particularly its girls; by cutting deep into all sectors of society it undermines vital economic growth – perhaps reducing future national GDP size in the region by a third over the next twenty years. And by putting huge additional demand on already weak, hard to access, public services it is setting up the terms of a desperate conflict over inadequate resources.
The fact that aids affects young adults, means that it hits the most productive members of the society, which has both social, economic and political consequences.
The epidemic is also connected with war and civil unrest. Wars fuel the epidemic, as Peter Piot pointed out: ‘War is the instrument of AIDS and rape is an instrument of war’. Summing up the impact of war on the spread of HIV, a Nigerian commentator identified six factors as relevant: widespread rape by soldiers; massive and uncontrollable population movements; the creation of large refugee camps and the conditions making for unprotected and forced sex within them; poverty leading to an increase in commercial sex; decline of literacy and access to basic prevention information; and the collapse of health services, leading to lesser ability to follow infection protection guidelines. All of these factors can be clearly identified in recent civil strife and warfare in the Congo, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, East Timor, and so on.
For the broader society HIV reduces life expectancy, distorts health budgets, and creates a new generation of orphans for whom adequate care is almost impossible. It is already having an impact on the economic future of many countries because it attacks those who are most productive, and increases the right of care on others parts of the world – the loss of workers and professionals is leading to a decline in living standards, compounded by the growing rates on already under-resourced health systems, and exacerbating the threat of famine.
- HIV AIDS and International Security
AIDS has had unquestionably severe effects on the security of individuals, economies, institutions and militaries within states. But the disease also has the power to strike at the security of the international system – and at the interests of states more removed from the epidemic.
The larger the country, the larger the potentially de stabilizing impact on the international arena: what happens in Russia, India and China, with their huge populations, large militaries and historic rivalries, matters a great deal elsewhere.
State chaos and disintegration has major potential cross-border consequences for neighbouring countries: from economic dislocation to refugee flows to the stimulation of uncontainable communal violence. This is already a concern for many of the countries under threat from AIDS.
HIV/AIDS has already begun to pose additional logistical and political problems for such peacekeeping operations as it is increasingly well known that peacekeepers are at a special risk both of contracting and spreading HIV when and where they are deployed. There are three important ways in which HIV/AIDS has begun to affect peacekeeping operations in recent years. (reference)
First, it has become increasingly well-known that deployed peacekeepers can contribute to the spread of HIV. The recognition that peacekeepers can be sources of HIV transmission has begun to create political problems for international peacekeeping operations, as countries cite this problem as a ground for refusing to host such missions. In eastern Africa, Eritrean officials initially demanded a guarantee that no HIV-positive soldiers would be deployed there.
A second way in which the impact of HIV/AIDS on armed forces could pose a future challenge for international peacekeeping operations is that it may also make such missions increasingly unpopular amongst those countries that contribute peacekeepers to them. After all, many of the factors that render national military populations a high-risk group in terms of HIV/AIDS apply just as well to international peacekeepers.
Countries may consequently become reluctant to contribute to peacekeeping operations if they realize that some of those who are deployed will return HIV-positive. Of the 10,000 troops that Nigeria sent to Sierra Leone in 1997, 11 percent of the returning ones tested HIV-positive.
Thirdly, the high rate of HIV in the African armed forces also makes it more difficult to staff international peacekeeping operations if the latter are now to be manned by HIV-negative soldiers only. Depending on the mission involved, peacekeeping operations can be notoriously difficult to staff and it is not always easy for the United Nations to find sufficient peacekeepers to meet its operational demands. This problem is further exacerbated by HIV/AIDS, which could lead to a decrease in the personnel that states can contribute to such operations.
The Security Council has taken this issue seriously enough to address it formally through Resolution 1308, which urges member states to screen their soldiers voluntarily. It also calls upon the Secretary-General to provide pre-deployment orientation on the prevention of the spread of HIV for peacekeepers. The United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations has since begun to look at the issue of HIV/AIDS more closely, and has developed an AIDS-awareness card to distribute to peacekeepers, which contains information about the illness and how it is transmitted. Despite these important efforts, the impact of HIV/AIDS on the peacekeeping operations adds an important international security dimension to the pandemic as well, especially as it will prove very difficult in practical terms for the United Nations to deploy only HIV-negative soldiers in light of the important human rights considerations involved, and the need to rely on certain armed forces to meet their operational requirements.
- Conclusion
HIV/AIDS by now has become a huge pandemic, risking human and international security and stability.
HIV/AIDS is seen as a state/international security issue and a humanitarian and human security issue at the same time. Indeed, it does not seem to be possible to separate state from human security or human from state security. Being a social problem needing political and social intervention, the focus is on “the problem of health, not disease. Before medical science and charity, what is required is universal social and economic justice.” (reference).
Although not all countries will be equally affected, the available evidence suggests that HIV/AIDS will rival war as a major cause of death, impoverishment and instability in the 21st century, globally. HIV/AIDS is becoming a significant cause of human and state insecurity in the Asia Pacific region, flourishing in and reinforcing conditions that can lead to war, social violence, humanitarian emergencies and economic collapse. According to UNAIDS It will claim more lives in the first decade of this century than all the wars fought in the 20th century. Without immediate action, the disease will kill and blight the prospects of whole generations in the worst affected countries, placing an intolerable burden on public health systems and exacting a heavy economic as well as human toll.
However, according to Heinecken, HIV/AIDS is not in itself a security problem. Rather, ‘it is the collective impact of the disease on the social structure of society and on state strength that creates the problem’. In the early years of this millennium, an advocacy consensus emerged not only that HIV/AIDS created security problems, but that the spread of the disease was affected by violent conflict. The January 2000 Security Council debate and Resolution 1308 were crucial in legitimizing and promoting these arguments. But the evidence advanced to support the Security Council’s key arguments, now appears less clear-cut, more complex and more case-sensitive.
Moreover, the causal links between HIV/AIDS and insecurity appear less robust. It is tempting to argue that some of the dangers identified have been averted through preventive action, not least AIDS awareness programmes and the issuing of condoms; but in retrospect the case made in 2000 was somewhat speculative, while worst-case thinking and snowballing subsequently elevated these concerns to a position of orthodoxy which now appears less assured.(reference)
This is not to say that HIV/AIDS does not create security problems; rather, it is to suggest that the case is somewhat more complex than originally articulated and the threat less direct.
- Bibliography
Elbe, Stefan, 2006. ‘Should HIV/AIDS Be Securitized? The Ethical Dilemma of Linking HIV/AIDS and Security’, International Studies Quarterly 50(1): 119–144.
Heinecken, Lindy, (2001) Living in Terror: The Looming Security Threat to Southern Africa. Africa Security Review 10(4):7-17.
Mark Malloch Brown (2000) Statement at Security Council Meeting, 10 January.
Parks Mankahlana (2000) Press release, Parks Mankahlana, Head of Communications, President Mbeki’s office, 24 March.
Peter Piot (2000) Statement at Security Council Meeting on HIV/AIDS in Africa, 10 January.
Ruku Oyaku (2001) ‘Wars and HIV/AIDS Spread in Sub-Saharan Africa’, posting to Break the Silence,
Thomas, Caroline (2000) Global Governance, Development and Human Security, pp.5–6. London: Pluto; UNDP (1999) Human Development Report: Overview. New York.
W. Tow and R. Trood (2000) ‘Linkages Between Traditional Security and Human Security’, in W. Tow, R. Thakur and I. Hyuen (eds) Asia’s Emerging Regional Order, p.20. Tokyo: Tokyo United Nations University.
Wolfensohn, James. January 10, 2000. Speech delivered to the UN Security Council. New York.
http://www.unaids.org/Unaids/EN/In+focus/HIV_AIDS_security+and+humanitarian+response/HIV_AIDS+and+security.asp The UNAIDS website for the security implications of HIV/AIDS