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by Mrs. Janet K.
Museveni,
First Lady of the Republic of Uganda,
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a privilege for me to be given time to share some of my
experiences in the area of HIV/AIDS prevention with you.
Let me begin by commending and saluting our hosts - the World
Congress of Families - for making this occasion possible, and for
investing time, energy and resources in finding solutions to this most
endangered of human institutions in the 21st century - the Family.
I need, first, to give you the context in which HIV/AIDS found us in
Uganda. In 1986, we were just emerging from a five-year guerrilla war,
and my husband had just got into government. Before the war, we had had
a decade or so of bad governance during the time of Idi Amin and
subsequent short-lived regimes.
It was a dark time in the history of our nation which brought untold
suffering, death and economic regression to the people. Many of the
elite classes fled the country during this time, and entire communities
were internally displaced. The fabric of our society was torn, our
cultural norms and practices shifted, and people lost their faith in the
familiar moral guidelines which did not seem to apply in the environment
of chaos. Our values as a people had decidedly changed, and we were
hardly conscious of the change at that time.
Therefore, when my husband began to lead Uganda in 1986, there was
much for him and his Administration to do. The priority of Government
was to rebuild the war-ravaged nation whose infrastructure had been
destroyed in all sectors including the economy, the roads, power and
communications, health and education.
HIV/AIDS had been reported in Uganda as early as 1982, but nothing
had been done about it until 1986; therefore, on top of all the
overwhelming challenges of re-building the nation, we found ourselves
faced with a strange killer disease which not even the scientists knew
much about.
The President quickly realized that this sexually transmitted disease
could spell the final deathblow to a people who were already down in
almost all respects. He had to make a choice: either to keep quiet
because of considerations such as our tourism trade and image, or to
speak out and sound an alarm in order to save lives. I am grateful to
God that my husband had the wisdom to choose the latter, and the rest of
the story is now common knowledge.
Following the President's firm and uncompromising leadership, it
became then a collective effort of all Government sectors, the
non-governmental organizations, the faith-based groups, the media and
all manner of community leaders including even our traditional healers,
to inform and educate the entire population and to put the country in a
state of alertness as far as HIV/AIDS is concerned. The methods were as
diverse as the people employing them, but the message was one and it was
clear: AIDS kills, there is no known cure for it, it is transmitted
mainly through sexual contact, and it can therefore be avoided.
Through a high level of commitment and persistence from the highest
level of leadership, and through an approach of openness, we have now
managed to achieve a high degree of AIDS awareness in the population, we
have reduced the stigma and fear attached to the diseased so that people
living with HIV/AIDS can live in our midst with acceptance and
understanding, and we have continued to improve our health delivery
system in order to give them better care.
More importantly, we have achieved a reduction in the rate of
infection of the epidemic, from 18.5% in 1995 to 6.1% in the year 2000.
I am happy to inform you that this drop in prevalence is among the
youth.
As my own contribution in this war against AIDS, I chose to focus on
our children - those who have been orphaned and those who still have
parents. Knowing, as I did, that traditionally, and even today, our
families find it difficult to discuss sex with their children whatever
age, I realized there was a great need to create an environment where
young people could direct their questions on sexuality and receive
satisfying answers. However, I found that if I was being honest with
myself, I could not possibly offer the condom as an option to our youth.
I knew there was another approach that could bring about a change in
behavior so as to ensure complete security and freedom from fear and
worry in the minds of our young people; the condom was not the answer.
Therefore, with the help of friends, we launched an effort called the
Uganda Youth Forum which has since become a non-governmental
organization and which, for the last 11 years, had been bringing youth
together from all corners of Uganda (and sometimes from neighboring
countries), at least once a year, to discuss their sexuality and other
issues relevant to their age and situation. In this Forum, whose
objective is to provide opportunities for dialogue, we introduce the
concept of Abstinence as the only viable and preferred method of staying
clear of the ugly head of AIDS. The concept of abstinence, as introduced
to the youth, is under-girded by Christian principles. But abstinence is
also a traditional values and practice in our cultures. There was a time
in our society when pre-marital pregnancies were punishable by death,
and virginity at marriage was a very valued commodity. Therefore the
Christian concepts of sexual purity and faithfulness in relationships
were not some strange or alien values we were trying to impose on our
young people - it was what had always worked in our society until the
system of values broke down through chaos and through the introduction
of foreign/modern cultures.
One of the activities we introduced in the Youth Forum
is similar to
that of the Movement of "True Love Waits" here in America.
When the young people are convinced that abstinence and faithfulness is
the way to go, we introduce commitment cards which they sign as a token
of their intention and resolve to remain sexually pure until their
marriage day and to remain faithful to their partners once married. Tens
of thousands of youth have attended these conferences both in Kampala,
our capital city, and up-country in the districts of Uganda. Those who
signed the cards ten years ago as teenagers are now young adults working
and preparing to get married. I always get emotionally moved when I come
across their testimonies in our local newspapers, announcing proudly to
all that they have kept their pledge to abstain and now they are getting
ready to present their commitment cards to their partners on their
wedding night as a gift.
Ladies and gentlemen, this may sound "Quaint" and old
fashioned to some people, but to us it is the message of life, literally
speaking.
Another activity of the Uganda Youth Forum is Youth Counseling. We
have gradually built up a body of counselors and try to link them up
with the youth throughout the year. This is important because in our
society we do not have many counseling services and yet young people
need reliable advice and a listening ear.
We could not have done it successfully without the support and
involvement of the parents. Therefore, one of the off-shoots of the
Youth Forum is Parenting Seminar. Through these seminars, parents get to
understand the issues affecting young people, they exchange views, and
they even form pressure groups to lobby Government, for example, about
media license and pornography. In the process, the generation gap
between parents and children narrows as cultural practices and
prejudices are adjusted through mutual understanding. Parents make an
effort to spend more time with their families and to give quality
attention to issues and to give quality attention to issues concerning
the young people.
I would not like to presume that the drop in the spread of the
HIV/AIDS among the youth of Uganda is a direct result of the activities
of the Uganda Youth Forum. It is difficult to establish empirically the
contribution of any one's campaign to the reduction of AIDS infection.
Other faith-based organizations and religious institutions have also
been giving out similar messages. We know that from 1994 to 1998 cases
of male sexual abstinence moved from 25% to 33% in the age group of
14-24 years old. The girls' percentage moved to 29% in the same period.
Furthermore, the age of first time sex among the girls has moved up
from 14 to 16 years. If 30% of our youth are abstaining from sex and
promiscuity, then it means this exercise is not futile, and we can and
must continue, because there is already a silver lining behind this
particular dark cloud.
Understandably, behavior change is not very popular with the movers
and shakers of the modern world because it is a slow and sometime
painful process. The skeptics argue that in an increasingly permissive
and hedonistic world, the advocates of abstinence are wasting
everybody's time.
What I want to testify to you categorically is that behavior change
may be slow and difficult but it is possible, and it should be the
preferred way because it trains the human mind to be disciplined and it
establishes the important qualities of self-control, restraint and
respect for the other person's life. Once acquired, this discipline
usually cuts across all the other areas of the person's behavior - for
example, with regard to abuse of alcohol, abuse of public funds, respect
for what belongs to others. Against most of these other evils, society
has not succeeded in developing the equivalent of a protective
"condom," and yet some of them are killers. The young person
who has been trained to be disciplined will, in final analysis, survive
better than the one who has been instructed to wear a piece of rubber
and continue with "business as usual."
When we fail to tell our children that there are limitation to human
freedom - for example, that there can be no freedom to hurt another
human being; when we fail to teach our young that there are some moral
absolutes and they must reckon with them or perish, then we do grievous
harm to the future of the human race.
And so I want to pause to you the same question that the Psalmist
asked in Psalms chapter 11 verse 3, as I conclude. It reads: "If
the foundations are destroyed, what should the righteous do?" In
other words, what it the Way Forward? My hope is that you will take this
question from here and continue to think about the answer. But I would
like you to listen to my answer before I sit down, and I have found it
also in Holy Scripture, in the words from the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 58
verse 12 which reads as follows: "And they that shall be of thee
shall build the old waste places; thou shalt raise up the foundations of
many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach,
The restorer of paths to dwell in."
Ladies and gentlemen, my sincere conviction as an elder in my society
is that it is my obligation to install the moral principle I believe in
into the next generations and that is the best way I can help save them.
I have nothing against the condom; I believe it is appropriate for
certain situations as a preventive measure. But having seen the havoc
that HIV/AIDS can wreak on a society, I would be less than honest if I
gave any other message to the next generations of Ugandans other than
abstinence and faithfulness in their sexual relationships.
I thank you for listening to me. |
