VIENNA (CNS): Large reductions in funding for AIDS work around the world are putting at risk the lives of people who depend on faith-based organisations for care, treatment and support, warned Catholic activists and others participating in the XVIII International AIDS Conference.
Results from a rapid assessment of 19 faith-based organisations working on AIDS in poor countries was conducted in June by the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance, which announced the results at a July 21 news conference.
The study found that all but two of the agencies surveyed were already experiencing at least a flat-lining of funding. Some had already been forced to make cutbacks in the past six months while others had been warned that cuts in funding levels were about to be announced.
Becky Johnson, the researcher who compiled the report, said funding cuts to faith-based groups could devastate poor areas of the world, such as sub-Saharan Africa, where such organisations provided up to 70 per cent of health care and HIV-related services.
United States Maryknoll Father Richard Bauer, who is executive director of Catholic AIDS Action, a program of the Namibian bishops’ conference, expressed concern that he may soon be forced to choose who lives and who dies.
“We provide support for over 14,000 orphans, and this cut in funding forces me to ask which child I have to say no to. What are the criteria? Is it the poorest kids, the HIV-positive kids, do we do psycho-social assessment, or what?” Fr Bauer asked.
“The donors say I’ve got to cut twenty per cent, and I need their help in figuring out where. But when I ask, they respond with deafening silence.”
Fr Bauer’s largest single funder is the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), created in 2003. The priest said PEPFAR has told him to expect a decline in funds through to 2015.
That cut was rumoured to be 20 per cent, Fr Bauer said, while the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, another major donor, has indicated that he would soon lose an initial 10 per cent, with more cuts likely to follow.
“PEPFAR wants to fund the government because they see that as more sustainable. Excuse me, but the Government of Namibia came into existence only in 1990, whereas the Church has been there for hundreds of years. If you’re really interested in sustainability, then fund the Church,” Fr Bauer told Catholic News Service.
Norway’s AIDS ambassador Sigrun Mogedal said the results of the ecumenical study accurately reflected what was happening on the ground in poor countries.
“These findings are real. They aren’t an effort to paint a grim picture in order to appeal for more funds. It’s the daily reality that many faith-based organisations and other groups are facing,” she said.
Ms Mogedal said faith-based organisations were the last groups that should be cut.
“Zenit.org reported Caritas Internationalis secretary general Lesley-Anne Knight, addressing participants of a pre-conference Catholic networking event, said “the three Cs – compassion, communion and conscience – should underline a Catholic approach that fosters dialogue, co-operation and an openness on how best to respond to the AIDS pandemic”.
“Our compassion needs to extend to people who are marginalized by society: to groups such as injecting drug users, men who have sex with men, commercial sex workers, and prison populations,” Ms Knight said.
