by PATRICK LEJTENYI

For all his erudition and excellent diction, Stephen Lewis can, at times, sound very undiplomatic. Appointed the United Nations Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in 2001, Lewis has advocated for AIDS treatment and prevention programs across the world, often using very un-UN language. As blunt as he is passionate, Lewis, a former Canadian politician and diplomat now living in Toronto, hasn’t minced words when criticizing either the Bush administration’s emphasis on abstinence over condoms, the Western world’s repeated failed attempts to help Africa, or Bob Geldof, who lent his support to the G8 leaders and their tepid commitments to African debt relief, as well as the non-governmental organizations who swallowed the G8’s promises.

Lewis was in Montreal last month to deliver the third of his Massey Series lectures (available in book form as Race Against Time). The Mirror met him in the lobby of a downtown hotel to discuss AIDS, international relations and the perils of being so critical of the world’s only superpower.

Mirror: In the lectures, you mention your life-long love affair with Africa that began as a student in the ’60s. How do you feel about it now?

Stephen Lewis: I remain idealistic about the continent. I continue to love the continent unreservedly. But it feels deeply depressing to see the remarkable change between a continent that was filled with expectation and buoyancy in the immediate flush of independence, compared to today, when so many countries are struggling for survival.

Two things that are most evident are the levels of poverty, which are more intense than they were in the ’60s, and the fact that there is a pandemic. But it’s not only the pandemic. In many countries it’s malaria, in other countries it’s tuberculosis, in others it’s, for children, measles or malnutrition.

Sir Bob and Bono

M: The tone of the book is very angry. How frustrating is it to work in this context?

SL: Maybe I feel a component of anger because of my own ideological construct. I’m a social democrat who believes profoundly that social injustice shouldn’t be tolerated and that the AIDS pandemic is a manifestation of social injustice and the disparity between North and South. There’s not a sufficient flow of resources, not a sufficient flow of technical assistance, not sufficient concern or engagement from the outside world. So you do get angry. How could you not get angry?

M: You also project a lot of anger toward Bob Geldof…

SL: I think the reason I find Geldof irritating is that he tried to give credence to something that didn’t deserve it [the G8’s Millennium Development Goals, which include debt relief, more aid money and access to education]. He lent himself to an illusion, he lent himself to misleading the African people. A, the target they set, in dollar terms, is insufficient to do the job. B, they will not reach the target. And therefore, to get on a platform, say “I give 10 out of 10, this is the greatest thing in human history that’s ever happened to Africa,” pepper it with a few expletives in order to ingratiate himself with the chic and trendy requirements, it just seems to me to be quite perverse. It actually undermines what he professes he wants to achieve. That’s why I find Bono so much more compelling, frankly. He’s a vastly more measured human being, he understands all of the aspects of these struggles. He doesn’t get seduced by power, he uses it.

Condoms, money negligence

M: If we talk about AIDS, you’ve been a harsh critic of George Bush’s ABC [Abstinence, Be faithful, Condoms] policy, especially the emphasis on the A. What kind of damage has that done, both to projects on the ground and the long-term vision on the best way to fight the spread of HIV/AIDS?

SL: Nobody objects to the ABC formula, generally speaking, and the use of all three. But when you distort the use with an exceptional or disproportionate emphasis on abstinence … it sets up an atmosphere which is discouraging the use of condoms, which in the UN’s opinion is the best single preventative measure we have. And abstinence obviously doesn’t work in certain situations. Abstinence is neither possible nor desirable in marriage. In many urban centres in Africa now, the prevalence rates are higher among married women than the prevalence rates among single sexually active women in the surrounding community. You can’t preach abstinence in a situation where gender inequality means sexual inequality, where the man makes all the demands, all the entitlements and all the decisions. And the same is true for sexually active adolescents. There’s nothing in the world wrong with encouraging adolescents to be abstinent as long as possible. But adolescents have hormones, and a great number of them are already sexually active, and to them, a condom is indispensable. So I think that it’s an ideological policy, it’s not scientifically based. It’s not based on what we’ve learned, it’s fundamentalist, it has, obviously, some of its origins in the religious right in the United States. And I think it’s basically wrong-headed.

M: What do you think has been the biggest failure in terms of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, particularly in Africa?

SL: I think the biggest failure was the delay in rolling out treatment. Because we lost millions of lives, and we continue to lose them unnecessarily. And that’s indescribably heartbreaking.

The slow roll-out of resources is another. Until two years ago, we had resources so paltry that it amounted to criminal negligence. Now the resources are starting to inch up, but they are far from what is needed. The first test of the Gleneagles agreement was Sept. 5 and 6, in London, with the Replenishment Conference for the Global Fund on AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The Global Fund circulated its papers based on proposals it had or knew were coming, which said by the end of 2007 we need $7.1-billion. That’s a conservative estimate, the minimum amount we need in order to do the job. The conference was chaired by [UN Secretary-General] Kofi Annan, everybody assumed that the momentum and the excitement from Gleneagles would wash over the Replenishment Conference and they’d get the 7.1 and more—and they get 3.7. They’re $3.4-billion short, which can be measured in lives.

Foes in high places

M: Do you think the public outcry for [World Bank/IMF] debt cancellation will continue, or do you think that Tony Blair and the Gleneagles summit co-opted that energy and momentum?

SL: I think it’s going to continue. What’s happened post-Gleneagles is more and more of the NGOs understand that, to some extent, they’ve been had. Or, I suppose, to put it in a more charitable way, they were so excited about having a political leader who was taking Africa seriously that they didn’t want to fight. Now that Gleneagles is over and the Replenishment Conference was so disappointing, everybody is having to fight again.

M: Your direct boss is Kofi Annan—does he ever take you aside and say, ‘Y’know, Stephen, the U.S. is kind of pissed off at you’?

SL: He’s been very kind to me. The Americans have been after my head for quite a while now. They went after me on the abstinence-condom stuff. And that’s fairly serious—when the superpower goes after you, it’s not that people run for cover, but they get anxious. And I think the UN has been pretty supportive.

M: Do you ever have awkward dinner conversations with your friends in NGOs?

SL: No. I think the NGOs understand. I’ve been a pretty good friend, we’ve worked together on most campaigns, we see the world the same way. The fact that I’m critical on one particular instance, I haven’t felt any estrangement. Maybe I will.

I think the estrangement from the establishment powers-that-be is rather more intense.

Race Against Time, House of Anansi Press, pb, 189pp, $18.95