Stephen Lewis Appointed UN Special Envoy on AIDS in Africa

UNITED NATIONS (CP) -- Stephen Lewis, former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, has been appointed special emissary for AIDS in Africa.

In making the announcement, Louise Frechette, deputy secretary general of the United Nations, spoke of Lewis’s passionate advocacy for Africa.

“He has devoted many, many years of his life to Africa. And the secretary general could not choose a better person, I think, to this very important work on HIV/AIDS,” she said.

Lewis said he felt “truly privileged” to receive the appointment “and to have the confidence of the secretary general to undertake this work.”

“I will plunge into it with a full heart,” he told a news conference at the United Nations in New York.

In a short address, Lewis described the international community’s delinquency in response to the disease but said he felt a cautious sense of hope as a result of plummeting drug prices, a Harvard consensus statement on treatment and the imminent launch of a global trust fund.

He said that later this month in a special session of the general assembly a definitive framework of commitment will be put in place.

“I’m no starry-eyed Pollyanna. I understand full well what a massive undertaking it is to mobilize the policies and programs and the physical ingredients and the infrastructure and the partners and the sheer human commitment to turn things around,” he added.

“But I truly believe that if a breakthrough is to be made, short of a vaccine, then this is the moment in time. It will be painfully slow and incremental, but this is the moment in time.”

“I look forward to making a contribution.”

Lewis, who was Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations from 1984 to ‘88, dramatically described a visit to a hospital during a trip to Swaziland.

“It was a scene straight out of Dante, the dead and the dying on every bed on every side,” Lewis recalled. “Members of the human family, men, women and children. Countless lives expunged in excruciating agony before their time. The sheer numbers tear away every vestige of dignity. It renders the human being anonymous. You witness it, and you experience a kind of simultaneous spasm of helplessness, anger and resolve.”

“This continent must be cleansed of the scourge. It cannot possibly happen soon enough. I note that it did not happen soon enough for Nkosi Johnson. That makes this an incomparably sad day. We must somehow turn the tide in Africa.”

Nkosi, a boy who was born with HIV and became an outspoken champion of others infected with the AIDS virus, died Friday of the disease he battled for all 12 of his years.

Nkosi was praised for his openness about his infection in a country where people suspected of carrying the AIDS virus often are shunned by their families and chased from their communities. Former South African President Nelson Mandela called him an “icon of the struggle for life.”

Lewis has had a long career in public life. He was also special adviser to the UN Secretary General on African Economic Recovery from 1986 to 1991.

He was former deputy executive director at UNICEF in New York. In the 1970s Lewis was the leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party.