"Just remember, whatever you do, don't mention condoms."
I froze halfway inside the hot, dusty classroom in Kampala, Uganda. I turned to Crystal, the coordinator for ASK Africa, an initiative promoting HIV/AIDS awareness and education in Ugandan primary and secondary schools. I must have looked bewildered because she again made it clear that my impending speech about the ASK program could not include any shout-outs to the Trojan Man. Apparently the headmistress would be present, and as far as she is concerned, "safe sex" is an oxymoron.
As a columnist last year, I wrote on the Bush Administration's shortsighted initiatives to promote abstinence as the primary approach to sex education in American schools. I never would have thought that, standing in front of 50 African schoolchildren months later, I would bear witness to just how far these ideological policies — and the probing hands of America's religious right — could reach.
It's bad enough that $1.3 billion has been spent domestically in the United States on these unproven and controversial abstinence-only programs, many of which are soiled with subliminal religious messages passed as scientific fact. But it's criminal, even unpardonable, that we have forced our own policies on countries unable to deny them, undermining the potency of programs needing every resource at their disposal in their educational arsenal to adequately equip vulnerable populations against a virus that continues to purge their countries.
When the year 2000 rolled around, and Africa's increased dependence on foreign donors coincided with a resurgence of Western radicalism, the continent's impoverished countries, including Uganda, were forced to conform to the ideologies of America's political elite in order to receive funds necessary for combating the deadliest pandemic in history. Seemingly ambitious and disturbingly arrogant, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), George W. Bush's global prevention program, was born. PEPFAR mandates that 33 percent of its funding is funneled into abstinence-only projects, and prioritizes abstaining and fidelity over safe-sex methods. Meanwhile, it fails to provide support for comprehensive prevention programs aimed at young people.
While PEPFAR has jeopardized AIDS programs in a multitude of countries, the Ugandan case has been especially tragic. During the 1990s, the country was seen as a poster child for eradicating AIDS rates in Africa, consistently hailed for its effective efforts in combating the global epidemic. At the cornerstone of its initiatives was a quality contraceptive program, which included a virtually unlimited supply of condoms, many of which were handed out for free at local bars to promote safe sex.
Yet, less than a month ago, data presented at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto confirmed that the tremendous gains Uganda made in the fight against HIV have withered away in the past five years — since Bush took the reins of U.S. policies. The cited reason? More unprotected sex, stemming mainly from a significant condom shortage that, according to Stephan Lewis, U.N. Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, is a crisis "being driven and exacerbated by the extreme policies that the administration in the United States is now pursuing." Such statistics reiterate what past evidence from an array of countries have already shown: that abstinence-only education not only persistently fails to curb the AIDS pandemic, but increases the risk of it spreading by discouraging the use of contraceptives.
Logically, PEPFAR has come under intense fire from an array of domestic and international actors, most recently from the U.S. Congressional Government Accountability Office (GAO). In April, GAO issued a report that the program's abstinence-only strategy may be undermining the entire effort to eradicate AIDS worldwide, joining the European Union, the U.N., African scholars, health care providers and educators in vocalizing deep concern about the U.S. policy.
The inadequacies of abstinence notwithstanding, PEPFAR's use of marriage as the antidote for the spread of AIDS is equally foolish. Studies have shown that, because of the rights married women lack in the third world, monogamous wives are actually some of the most vulnerable individuals for HIV infection worldwide. Moreover, American policymakers have overlooked the importance of teaching safe sex to spouses, which, aside from erecting another barrier to HIV, would help address Africa's other main problem: overpopulation. I was shocked to learn that many of my students had no idea condoms could prevent pregnancy; nor did they understand the concept of family planning.
Living in Africa gave me many reasons to take pride in being an American. But on that hot day in Kampala, I was never more embarrassed to come from a country where such unyielding power, wisdom and influence could expunge such unforgivable ignorance. Walking home that day, as I pondered this paradox, two children in tattered Snoop Dogg and Nelly T-shirts beamed at me, oblivious to the fact that they were being betrayed by the very society they envy the most.
Adam Lichtenheld ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in political science and African studies.
