IRIN Web Special on Civilian Protection in Armed Conflict

Humanitarian workers have noted that the sheer scale of the HIV/AIDS crisis, particularly in Africa, brings a whole new dimension to the protection of civilians.

"By overwhelming Africa's health and social services, by creating millions of orphans, and by decimating health workers and teachers, AIDS is causing social and economic crises which in turn threaten political stability," according to Dr Peter Piot, Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

"The impact of HIV/AIDS on this part of the world is enormous and the impact on women and children is devastating," James Morris, the UN Secretary-General's special envoy for humanitarian needs in Southern Africa warned in January.

What constituted an emergency would have to be redefined, and all projects would be seen through the eyes of how they would solve the HIV/AIDS challenge, Morris said. "This crisis is an emergency that we have never known before. We are simply going to have to look at things very differently than we have before."

Africa is already hard-hit by HIV/AIDS but infection rates and/or patterns of infection are also a serious concern in parts of central and Southeast Asia, in the Caribbean and in Eastern Europe.

What happens when the education sector, the water sector, the transport sector goes? Morris asked. Some government officials have said it feels like an overall societal collapse and that they are fighting for survival, said the UN Secretary-General's special envoy for HIV/AIDS, Stephen Lewis.

The enormous burden on women - not only are they sick and dying but they are caring for other sick and dying people, often without recognition or assistance - and "the predatory sexual behaviour of men" had to change, he added.

In the context of its threat to the fabric and balance of societies, HIV/AIDS is now recognised as a threat to security - with the UN Security Council calling for an intensified fight against the disease in the context of human security.

"The simple fact that the world's ultimate tribunal on questions of peace and security devotes its attention to AIDS sends a powerful message: AIDS is a serious matter for all the world's peoples," according to Piot.

With some peacekeeping forces coming from countries with high prevalence rates and some, though certainly not all, peacekeeping missions are deployed to parts of the world where there is a relatively high incidence of HIV/AIDS, there is also the that peacekeepers could contract, or transmit, HIV while they are on mission," according to the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UNDPKO).

The HIV/AIDS pandemic has become a human security and governance issue no less destructive than warfare itself, according to the findings of a project aimed at exploring the impact of the disease on security in Southern Africa.

The Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies (ISS) launched the "AIDS and Security" project to study the linkages between stability, security and governance in the region, which has the world's highest rates of HIV/AIDS.

An ISS research paper published earlier this year found that HIV/AIDS could complicate attempts at post-conflict reconstruction in countries with high HIV prevalence rates.

"Efforts at demilitarisation and reintegrating combatants may be threatened when combatants return to dying families and villages; and by the breakdown of government, police and civil society to the point that they may be useless in filling the gap the military leaves behind," the paper stated.

There is often a surge in HIV prevalence rates after conflict because of all the movement within a country, making development difficult, and while humanitarian agencies had factored this into their response to a certain extent, they had not fully taken the role of HIV/AIDS into account - Martin Schonteich, head of the AIDS and Security project at ISS, told IRIN.

The increasing number of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS was another concern, he said. Poor living conditions, malnourishment and a lack of education "trapped" these children into a cycle of poverty, leading to an environment conducive to crime and exploitation.

The explosive combination of acute food shortages and the HIV/AIDS epidemic has called for a "total rethink" when dealing with Southern Africa's current humanitarian emergency, according to UN agencies and NGOs. "The food crisis is the manifestation of a larger HIV/AIDS crisis," Urban Jonsson, UN Children's Fund Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa noted.

A lower capacity to cope and increased vulnerabilities caused by the epidemic are features of this crisis. Food production has been lowered as a result of more adult deaths and there has been a higher dependency ratio, as the premature death of adults has meant fewer adults supporting the same number of children.

"People are too weak to plant, too weak to harvest, so this will go on," Jonsson said. "The problems don't go away with better weather. That means the response governments and the international community make must recognise that."

HIV/AIDS can create more "volatile" social and political situations, aggravating and provoking "social fragmentation and political polarisation," according to Schonteich.

In keeping with the human security concern, UNAIDS has called for the international community to help strengthen the national and regional capacity needed to address HIV/AIDS, especially in conflict situations, and to try to move at the regional level to break the nexus between conflict and HIV transmission.

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