Holy Thursday: Back in New York, I am still carrying the sight and sounds of yesterday morning at the 5 Years Too Many demonstrations. The scene is a death march on one corner, black-robed, white masked walkers, some carrying “bodies”, a couple beating drums, slowly moving along the sidewalks and across the street, sober and silent. In the middle of the park, behind the deathbeats, Dave gently plays haunting “taps” on the low stage. He plays it only once. And as he’s ending, a huge flock of birds flies in behind him, makes a slow u-turn, and flies out…it was immensely beautiful and moving; the unplanned marked my day!
Now on to a few of the things I’ve been up to these last couple of months (I'll leave reflections for another time.)
February: I went to hear MM priest/doctor Peter LeJacq speak at a seminar on “Health Care and Human Rights: A World in Need.” The seminar looked at ethical issues in global health action, and Peter focused on “Having Faith in Medicine: Lessons from Tanzania”. Peter has worked with Weill Cornell Medical College for several years to establish the first Catholic medical school in East Africa. I heard afterwards that the seminar website featured Peter front and center as the most appreciated speaker that day!
I also attended the ICCR Health Care meetings, which included presentations by Neeraj Mistry of the Global Business Council (which has been working in HIV/AIDS in attempts to bring businesses into the fight against AIDS and to improve how individual businesses respond to the pandemic with their personnel, families and local communities), as well as Rohit Malpani, policy analyst at Oxfam Internacional. In the context of corporate accountability, Rohit looked at the impact of intellectual property and trade agreements on access to medicines, especially around AIDS, TB, malaria and more recently, Hepatitis C. He also discussed the issue of the lack of pharmaceutical research around neglected diseases, especially in developing countries.
Our UN Committee on HIV and AIDS has been developing well after a couple of slow years, where we seemed to be bogged down by one person. In February we started a process of identifying our priorities in order to begin a more strategic program. It is tricky to know at the UN where to focus: participation in major sessions; visits with missions; education and sharing of information – or all of the above. The committee is very mixed, including persons who are full time at the UN, but focused on many issues, to people who only come in on one issue part-time. Our major focus until June is the coming High Level Review on AIDS; we are attempting to be involved as a committee, to improve civil society participation and to make certain that we bring the voices of those we represent overseas. In addition, the topic for the 2009 Commission on the Status of Women is “The equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including care-giving in the context of HIV/AIDS”. Therefore, we have started working on possible approaches to this theme for next year, as well as beginning to consider early on how to bring persons from developing countries to participate in this session.
I also had a very helpful meeting with Lisa Jacobson from Archives; it’s amazing how much we have here in this office.
March, of course, was spent mostly in Washington DC!! But it was really a time to be aware of how exciting and hopeful it is to work with college students and young adults (absolutely including Emily and Ariel!). I spent a fair amount of time with a young graduate from Fairfield University, Marco Ambrosio, who is working on a project to show the realities of people living with AIDS receiving help from well resourced organizations vs those with limited resources. Marco is enthusiastic, has raised all of his own money for his project (which took him to San Francisco, Thailand, Nicaragua and India) and has met with Fr. Mike Bassano. I invited him to join me to speak at a UN study day for college students two weeks ago. I also met with a young woman from Marquette U, who happened to be visiting friends in New York. We attended the launch of an Anti-Trafficking Campaign (Stop the Demand) sponsored by UNANIMA International, at the U.N. Meara already has this amazing background of having lived in Italy and volunteered in Kenya!
I think this is too long: the lesson is to do it more often…but Easter Blessings to each of you! Being with you this month was a resurrection blessing for me! And, Happy Spring!
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