Stephen Lewis
I recently finished reading 'Race Against Time' by Stephen Lewis. For those of you unaware Lewis is the UN Secretary-General's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, Maclean's magazine's "Canadian of the Year" in 2003 and listed by TIME magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2005, to repeat his other accolades would take to long.In the concluding pages Lewis says the following...
'... And what does one do about Swaziland? Here we have a king who defiantly practices polygamy, who takes more than a dozen wives, the most recent being sixteen years of age, who talks of building them individual palaces, and sweeps across the Swaziland stage in new-fangled cars of outrageous price.
In the meantime, his "subjects" are dying in numbers that would have made Malthus weep, living in a country with the highest [HIV/AIDS] prevalence rate in the world - the most recent estimate, based on antenatal sites, having risen to 42 percent! And all of us are quiet; nary an audible peep from the UN family.
How is this silence anything other than complicity? As I said before, I'm not suggesting that the "right to protect" is the right to intervene, but surely it is the right to denounce. Believe me, I know how tough it is. When I visited Swaziland, I met at length with the king in private, and attempted to persuade him, with a combination of subtlety and argument, that the world was increasingly impatient, his people were decimated, and his behavior was unacceptable. Then we held a press conference together and I held my tongue.
I have felt guilty about that to this day. Whom did it serve but the bloated ego of the monarch?...'
CPAC has the inaugural Ashbury Lecture that Lewis gave in April of this year. Do yourself a favour and find yourself an hour and watch it here. (Originally bought to my attention courtesy of Carla)
As mentioned to a colleague in the past, Lewis has the unique ability to tell it as it is, which makes for both compelling reading and viewing.
posted by Mark @ 9:45 PM
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