Stephen Lewis, one of Canada's most influential international human rights advocates, received an honorary doctorate last week from Royal Roads University in recognition of his efforts to bring worldwide attention to HIV/AIDS. This is an edited excerpt from his convocation address to the graduates.
There was an intense debate recently at the UN Security Council on what happens to children in situations of armed conflict. The secretary-general said 2014 was the worst year in the last couple of decades for children, and that the evisceration and annihilation of children as a result of the Syrias, and the Libyas, and the Afghanistans, and the Iraqs and the Yemens was almost too heartbreaking to imagine, let alone to chronicle.
My mind went back to those 220 young girls who were abducted by Boko Haram in northern Nigeria more than a year ago. The violation of their persons is incomprehensible. They undoubtedly have been physically abused. They’ve been raped. They have suffered terribly as domestic servants. Many of them are no doubt pregnant and beside themselves as to how to handle the pregnancy. Yet the world never adequately responded. We all promised, and nothing happened.
We managed to find drones that can pinpoint and assassinate al-Qaida terrorists from Pakistan to Yemen, but we cannot summon the collective determination to rescue 200 young girls.
While I was at the United Nations, news emerged that electrified Europe, that in the middle of 2014, little boys were sexually abused by French troops who were peacekeeping in the Central African Republic.
The knowledge of what had happened to those boys was gathered by the UN, and no one said anything for an entire year. In the highest levels of officialdom, there had been damage control, there had been secrecy, there had been a conspiratorial network to suppress the information.
When I think of what happened to those little boys, what happens to the girls in Nigeria, I think of the broader issue of sexual violence, which has become a kind of epidemic. It’s not only in conflict — it’s intimate-partner violence, it’s marital rape, it’s gang rape, it’s what happens outside of conflict.
It’s heartbreaking, it’s incomprehensible. It’s rooted in gender inequality.
There is no struggle on the planet more important than the struggle for gender equality. You cannot marginalize 50 per cent of the world’s population and expect to achieve social justice. It just won’t happen.
The litany of discrimination, stigma and violence visited on women — international sex trafficking, female genital mutilation, the absence of land rights, the absence of political representation — is a monstrous reality that we must overcome.
This September at the UN, the countries of the world will gather to consecrate what they call the sustainable-development goals that will govern public policy in most countries for the next 15 years.
Two of those goals are particularly important. One of them is the elimination of poverty and hunger. The very rich countries of the Western world are not anywhere near reaching the target, decided on in 1970, of finding 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product to assign to foreign aid.
In fact, Canada has dropped almost to the bottom of the numbers of Western countries in the percentage of aid. It is painful to think our country is so delinquent in this measure.
The other side is a question of what we do about climate change, which will be central to the discussions in September.
I’m one of those who believe that by the year 2050, we are going to have an apocalyptic event that will eclipse everything — the tsunami, what happened in New Orleans, even in terms of the measurable, what happened in Haiti. There doesn’t seem to be a readiness to recognize that we’re fighting for the survival of the planet and that our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren are put at enormous risk for survival.
And just a couple of weeks ago, the G7 nations got together and said by 2100, we will no longer be carbon-dependent economies. What a load of rhetorical claptrap! There were no targets, nothing by way of compliance, no punitive dimensions if you didn’t comply. It was just a series of aspirational voluntary assertions.
Despite the constant talk of the end of AIDS, we still have 20 million people living with the virus. They’re fighting desperately to survive, even while the major international donors and major countries are drawing back, and the funds are drying up. More than a million and a half people are still dying every year.
We always have money to bail out the banks, and we always have money for corporate bonuses, and we always have money to fight wars, but we never have sufficient funds to help global public health. That’s what has to be overcome.
