Why Don't We Care About African Genocide?

HofT
I should add that for the most part The entire African continent is a basket case one way or another.

AU - precisely my point. All sub-Saharan Africa is a basket case.

I don't think the article exaggerates on Darfur, since the same info is confirmed from a multiplicity of sources. I do question the author's motives in focusing on that particular location to the exclusion of other, incomparably greater, humanitarian catastrophes elsewhere.

This confirms HofT's opinion about Africa being a basket case.

HIV 'set to infect 90m Africans'

The UN says the worst is yet to come with the Aids epidemic
Nearly 90 million Africans could be infected by the HIV virus in the next 20 years if more is not done to combat the epidemic, the UN has warned.
Some 25 million Africans have HIV, the virus that causes Aids, at present.

The world body estimates the next two decades could see 89 million new cases of the disease in Africa - or up to 10% of the continent's population.

The UN recommends a committed campaign against HIV/Aids - and $200bn (£105bn) of investment - to stem its spread.

At best, taking more action against Aids could save 16 million people from dying of the disease and a further 43 million people from contracting it, the UN says.

Dramatic impact

The UN report concludes that if millions of Africans are still being infected by the HIV virus by 2025, "it will not be because there was no choice".

"It will be because, collectively, there was insufficient political will to change behaviour at all levels... and halt the forces driving the Aids epidemic in Africa."

The study, entitled Aids in Africa, was compiled over two years using more than 150 experts.

According to the BBC's UN correspondent, Suzy Price, it demonstrates the dramatic impact government policies could have on the spread of HIV and Aids in Africa.

Epidemic threat

The report offers three different models of how the disease could affect the continent in 20 years, based on how much money and effort is invested in fighting it.


The disease has already affected millions of lives in Africa

The worst-case scenario, in which funding and policies stay as they are now, foresees a fourfold increase in the total number of people dying from Aids.

The report also looks at two more positive outcomes.

In the best-case scenario, international aid flows to Africa are doubled, investment in health systems is increased and agriculture and education and treatment is dramatically improved.

The report says that even in this case the total number of deaths would continue to rise.

According to our correspondent, the UN offers hope that the effective use of resources could eventually end the Aids epidemic in Africa.

At the same time, it warns that current levels of action could see the disease bring the entire continent to its knees.

In commenting on the situation relative to the spread of aids in Africa. Is the lack of funds and or medical facilities the major factor? Or the culture and understanding of the people who spread it at fault. Money and facilities treat the afflicted but education, restraint and will is needed to treat the cause. Unless that is addressed it will continue to be a losing battle.

au, It's obviously the failure of their government to educate and enforce some simple laws. In most countries, spreading HIV/AIDS is tantamount to murder.

I find the implicit suggestion that a lack of concern for the unhappy fate of sub saharan Africa is a particularly American matter, particularly odd.

In fact the United States has shown more concern and willingness to act to address the many political, economical, and social maladies of that unhappy continent than have their former colonial masters and exploiters in Europe.

It is the idiotic rule makers of Europe who create such absurdities as the ICC and mostly unenforcable international rules about crimes against humanity and genocied, who then rush to hide their heads deeply in the sand when the "g" word is accurately used to describe what is happening in Sudan.

France is very quick to intervene forcefully when their commercial interests are threatened as recently in the Ivory Coast. However, beyond that shows little concern. This question should be addressed to Europeans and fans of the United Nations.

I know, I know - you really like to post such.

But the ICC is neither a product by "idiotic European rule makers" nor are international laws only an outspring of this "idiocracy".

You don't like that, George, but please stay with the facts.

Well, Walter. Would you then describe the origin of the ICC?

With pleasure:

The ICC has been established by the "Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court" in 1998.

The Rome Statute is an agreement, signed by some 140 countries - and was only opposee by ME-countries (and some African).
Further, by 2002, China, Russia, and the United States had declined to participate.

...and how does that depart from georgeob1's characterization?

Hmm - have not most of the posters on this thread made the point that this is a world issue - rather than peculiarly a US one?

Hoft's point about lack of equal concern re the Congo, for instance, is well made. Though perhaps everyone has almost given up hope there...sigh.....

Okay, it were idiotic European rule makers [with some more from about 100 more countries from other continents as well].

Hope that pleases you, Lash.

Yes. Thank you. It did make me smile. I owe you.

Lash can research here - and discover how many countries outside of Europe are involved.

I guess many African, Asian, American and Oceanic nations are idiotic Europeans in disguise:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court

Lash has already researched. Mayhap Dlowan should research the question she walked in on.

I have. My comment stands.

As does mine.

We were discussing where the ICC ORIGINATED...not who eventually signed on.

Walter quibbles, but it is a fact that the European adhearants of the ICC and like judicial approaches to the solution of serious problems have contorted themselves in rather unusual ways to avoid describing the slaughter in Sudan in a way that would cause them to act on their lofty but meaningless acts of legislation. This is of course a marvelous illustration of Aesop's fable about the mice belling the cat.

http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/2003_spring/gardels.html

Related to the discussion---and a great new source (for me, anyway.)

They publish - besides others - Presidential Studies Quarterly as well.