4-01-05, 9:23 am

Human rights advocates blasted a US-backed abstinence-only program in Uganda for 'hijacking' what was once a successful battle against HIV/AIDS.

A recent report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) shows that due to financial pressure from the Bush administration, many sex education programs have eliminated public health information from its curricula that teaches accurate condom use. Uganda's AIDS Commission has ordered school teachers not talk about condom use along side abstinence.

Official US policy is the so-called ABC approach – abstinence, be faithdul, and condom use. But recent revelations recorded in HRW's report show that US-sponsored and financed organizations are purposely leaving out condom use in their education programs.

Uganda's President Museveni has also condemned condom use and has increased pressure on teachers not to talk about it.

HRW's report quotes one school teacher in Kasese who complained, 'At the teacher training, we were told not to show [pupils] how to use condoms and not to talk about them at our school. In the past, we used to show them to our upper primary classes. Now we can’t do that.'

US taxpayers have provided $8 million this year alone for programs that teach abstinence only, according to Human Rights Watch. Museveni's wife heads the National Youth Forum, which the Bush administration has supported with US tax dollars and also teaches abstinence as the only means to protect young people from HIV/AIDS.

One youth activist in Kampala was quoted as saying,'With funding coming in now, for any youth activities, if you talk about abstinence in your proposal, you will get the money. Everybody knows that.'

But some educational programs don't just leave out condom use. Some new educational materials that have received ideological support and financial assistance from the Bush administration falsely claim that latex condoms have microscopic pores that can be permeated by HIV, and that pre-marital sex is a form of “deviance.”

The HRW report quoted Bush administration-funded material as using religious arguments against pre-marital sex: 'Sex before marriage is not only breaking school rules but against religion and norms of all cultures in Uganda and having pre-marital sex is considered a form of deviance.'

It followed those remarks with blatantly wrong information about condoms: 'Condoms are not 100% perfect protective gear against STDs and HIV infection. This is because condoms have small pores that could still allow the virus through.'

The US has sponsored rallies in Uganda that have also pushed this scientifically baseless claim.

Uganda faces a nationwide condom shortage due to new government restrictions on condom imports after the Health Ministry in late 2004 recalled batches of imported condoms as part of its new oppositon to their use. Public health experts and Ugandan AIDS organizations fear that the shift toward abstinence-only programs will reverse the much touted success that country experienced due to a broad sex education program that included teaching youth proper condom use and abstinence.

Uganda's condom distribution programs helped push its infection rate down from 15 percent in the early 1990s to about 6 percent in 2002. Currently it is about 10 percent. About 1 million Ugandans are infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS.

AIDS activists universally agree that this emergency situation requires proven preventative measures, not ideological or religious-based agendas to stem the massive loss of human life.

“These abstinence-only programs leave Uganda’s children at risk of HIV,” said Jonathan Cohen, of Human Rights Watch. “Abstinence messages should complement other HIV-prevention strategies, not undermine them.”

Abstinence programs have been used since 1981 in the United States, where they have proven in numerous independent studies to be ineffective and potentially harmful. In abstinence-only programs, young people are pressured to promise not to have sex while condom use is either ignored as subject matter or youth are taught that condoms don't work.

In 2004, the Bush administration ordered the Center for Disease Control to ensure that US-based organizations that sought federal funding would teach what the administration believes are the dangers of condom use as well as abstinence. This review process was then turned over to ideologically motivated political appointees rather than scientists and public health experts.

Studies show that a large percentage of those who pass through abstinence-only programs and take pledges not to have sex until marriage fail. Critics of these programs say that this combination of a high rate of failure and lack of proper condom use training may actually lead to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, and unwanted pregnancies.

“Abstinence-only programs are a triumph of ideology over public health,” said Cohen. “Americans should demand that HIV-prevention programs worldwide stick to science.”  

The Bush administration has also used the abstinence issue as an excuse to delay adhering to its highly publicized 2003 promise of dramatically increasing aid to fight the disease. Since 2003, the administration has used the threat of withholding funding from the Gobal Fund and other international organizations to try to force its shaky abstinence views on the international community.

So far this effort has failed, with the apparent exception of Uganda.

The UN estimates that in 2008 the international community will need to spend $20 billion to fight AIDS. So far the Bush administration has contributed only a fraction of what it has promised to this fight.

Uganda's president doesn't only share Bush's abhorrence of condoms. Museveni came to power in a 1986 military coup. Last year, human rights organizations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch accused his regime of using torture and mass arrests to suppress political opposition. More recently, his security forces clashed this week with protestors who accuse Museveni of trying to install himself as a permanent dictator.

This shabby human rights record hasn't deterred Bush from developing a special friendship. Bush seems more interested in their shared distaste for safe sex. Bush visited Museveni in 2004 to congratulate him on implementing a Bush-style sex education policy.

Museveni's friendship with the Bush administration extends also to a shared disdain for the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the two countries signed a bilateral agreement last year to exempt persons accused of war crimes from reference to the ICC.

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