The Pan Pacific Regional HIV/AIDS Conference 2005 was held in Auckland, New Zealand from October 25 to 28. JOHN ROCK was there.
This was the first truly pan-Pacific conference ever held on HIV, and it was a very Pacific affair. The red ribbon logo was composed of hibiscus flowers, and the motif in Maori was Te whanau o te moana-nui-a-kiwa, me te mate parekore, or ‘Family of the Pacific and HIV/AIDS’.
It was a gentle conference in the tradition of the islands, starting with a Maori welcome (known as a Powhiri) held at the Orakei Marae (meeting house) on a headland overlooking the expanse of Auckland Harbour, and followed by a lavish banquet. Speeches and presentations by Maori throughout the conference were each followed by a traditional song, while the audience contemplated what had been said.
Yet despite all the veneer of well being and tranquillity, there are some storms gathering in the Pacific.
The Pacific hardly ever is mentioned in discourses on HIV. The reason is that the raw numbers of identified cases remain very small, barely a couple of thousand if you exclude Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand. On the other hand, HIV has been found in virtually all of the Pacific island countries, and even though some small island states have recorded only a handful of cases (five or six or even fewer), when the total population of the country is only a few tens of thousands, and there may have been several years of infectivity behind the identified cases, there is reason for concern. Many of the Pacific island states are very fragile, for under the palms swaying in the balmy trade winds, there is poverty, stricken economies, poor governance and very little infrastructure.
There is general agreement that action is required now to avoid HIV becoming potentially a crushing burden that may even push some states over the edge into total collapse. The good news is that there is still time, but not much. And there are several barriers to an effective and timely response. One of them is terrible stigma and discrimination that surrounds HIV, another is the role and attitude of some of the churches, and the influence they have on life in the Pacific.
Given the stigma and discrimination and the reluctance to be identified, it was a giant step forward that positive people from some 12 Pacific states attended the conference. Body Positive Auckland obtained funding for and organised two positive events before the conference started. A Positive Pacific Forum was held the day before the conference began, and a dinner for positive people to get to know each other informally was held the evening before that.
During the Forum, about 60 people worked in groups to identify their priorities, and then these priorities were discussed and agreed upon, and issued in a ‘declaration’ on behalf of the Positive People of the Pacific and covering four key areas of stigma and discrimination, HIV in the workplace, access to treatment and advocacy.
This declaration was delivered on behalf of the group by Jane Bruning of Pos Women New Zealand at the Conference’s opening plenary session. She invited all positive people in the room to join her on the podium. In the knowledge that cameras were in the room, it was amazing that over 60 positive people rose to their feet and went to stand in solidarity with Jane while she read the declaration.
The declaration calls for awareness by governments of, and action to eradicate, stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS, including funding for PLWHA groups to help them address ‘self-stigma’.
Importantly, the declaration calls for access to treatment for everyone who needs it and an approach to health care based on partnership with people living with HIV/AIDS.
However, although the audience gave a standing ovation to all those positive people when they went back to their seats, most speakers at the conference ignored them from then on. The organisers had done an excellent job in building positive involvement into the program itself through presentations and workshops; it was the speakers who were the problem, from keynote plenary speakers from global institutions who ought to know better, to the speakers who gave the closing summaries (with the exception of the wonderful Clive Aspin), and the final plenary. The trouble is that those are the people who are supposed to be driving the fight against HIV in the Pacific, and they showed clearly that they still have no focus on or commitment to the involvement of positive people at any meaningful level.
Apart from in PNG we are yet to see the formation of a truly independent PLWHA group run only by positive people in any Pacific island state. But perhaps even more worrying is the influence of some of the churches in the Pacific.
The epidemic in the Pacific is totally sexually driven and mainly through heterosexual sex. Some high-risk groups such as sex workers, seafarers and men who have sex with men are either totally marginalised or ignored. The lowest point of the conference must surely have been when a bishop from Fiji said that sexual relations were intended by God to be only for the procreation of children within marriage and for no other purpose. Any deviation from this is a sin and those who commit that sin will have to pay the consequences. One church leader told me that he was going to devote his time to education on HIV. When I asked him if he was going to involve positive people in the project he looked at me quite shocked and was keen to get away from me as quickly as possible.
At the closing ceremony we heard about how profound a meeting with the Pope had been for the final speaker, although he confessed to not being Catholic himself, but we did not hear much about actions to drive the fight in the Pacific against HIV. Suddenly there were prayers, and then everyone stood for a final hymn to close the conference. As far as I am aware only two of us remained seated, me and a new-found positive friend from New Caledonia. We just looked at each other and shook our heads.
