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The Lutheran World Federation
Lutheran World Information |
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| 02.12.2004 |
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| World AIDS Day: Religious Leaders Urged to Move Beyond Ignorance, Ineptitude |
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LWF General Secretary Endorses Broad-based Cooperation as Ecumenical Center Hosts Commemoration
GENEVA, 2 December 2004 (LWI) – While paying tribute to the collaboration between faith communities, civil society, non-governmental organizations and governments in their response to HIV and AIDS, the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) General Secretary, Rev. Dr Ishmael Noko has urged religious leaders to “move beyond ignorance and ineptitude and rise up to fight the pandemic.”
“There should be no more onlookers in this struggle while millions, especially women and young girls continue to suffer and die,” Noko told Lutheran World Information (LWI) following a joint commemoration of World AIDS Day on December 1 by various international bodies including faith-based organizations at the Ecumenical Center.
The theme for this year’s commemoration, “Have You Heard Me Today? Women’s Voices, Vulnerabilities and Victories in the Face of HIV/AIDS,” aims at raising awareness about, and addressing the many issues affecting women and girls confronted by the pandemic today. Noko appealed to all religious leaders and faith communities to “stand up against sexual violence and all forms of violence that increase the vulnerability of women and girls to HIV and AIDS.”
A significant action of the 2004 World AIDS Day events at the Ecumenical Center was the launching of the “Code of Good Practice for NGOs Responding to HIV/AIDS,” a policy document to which the LWF is a signatory. Noko remarked, “the commemoration of this day is a good sign that governments, civil societies and faith communities are working together, and should give us more impetus toward combating the disease.”
The Code of Good Practice was originally signed by160 NGOs including 19 faith-based organizations. It is aimed at ensuring accountability and quality programming in response to the expanding role of NGOs in the prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS.
The LWF’s HIV/AIDS Action Plan and Campaign, launched in 2002 under the theme, “Compassion, Conversion, Care: Responding as Churches to the HIV/AIDS Pandemic,” seeks to engage the LWF member churches worldwide in a more active and coordinated response in the fight against the pandemic, including increased collaboration with ecumenical and other partners. Noko has welcomed the Code of Good Practice as a policy that accentuates key elements of the LWF action plan such as fighting discrimination and stigma, and ensuring access to care.
At a World AIDS Day worship at the Ecumenical Center Chapel, with prayers specially dedicated to women and girls, Rev. Lusmarina Campos Garcia, pastor of the English-speaking congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Geneva presented a choreographic response to the Gospel reading based on Mark 5:25-34 (Jesus’ healing of the woman who had bled for 12 years) with a symbolic HIV/AIDS red cloth. She moved with the cloth, wrapping it around herself and finally laid it on the floor in front of the altar in an outline of the AIDS ribbon. Toward the end of the ceremony, worshippers lit candles which they placed along the cloth’s edges, as each person offered a silent or spoken prayer, then touched the cloth in memory of close family and friends who have died from AIDS.
Ms Linda Hartke, coordinator of the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EAA) noted that many people today can relate to HIV/AIDS unlike in the early days when it was considered to be a disease confined mostly to men from Europe and North America, and for which there was no cure. Now it is slightly different in that “the dying no longer come so much from the West, but from parts of the world outside the scope of global communications.” While there is medicine to control HIV, she noted, “it does no good for those who cannot afford it.” The disease, she added, presently puts women and girls at greater risk than men.
The LWF is a member of the EAA, the Geneva-based international network of churches and Christian organizations cooperating in advocacy on HIV/AIDS and global trade.
According to the United Nations AIDS body, UNAIDS, and the World Health Organization, nearly half of the 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the world are women. Sub-Saharan Africa with 10 percent of the world’s population, is by far the worst-affected with over 60 percent of all people living with HIV. (710 words)
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