Steve Haas:
As you see inside your program as well, we’re going to try and get you as much information from as many different people as possible. In putting together something like this, that usually means a panel. And we have three of them today.

Also, one quick housekeeping item. Some of you have asked, what are we doing tomorrow? It’s been talked about.

Tomorrow morning, after breakfast, there will be a briefing in which we’ll give you some materials as well as Bob Zachritz who is just standing over here recently, will be leading you through a time to help allay any fears you have if this is the first time you’ve ever done something like this. Actually I found Senator Santorum’s words rather reassuring – just close your eyes, think of sanctuary, and then preach. (audience laughing)
You should do just fine.

It’s a pleasure to briefly introduce the panelists and the moderator for these first of three panels that we’re going to be hearing from today. Please note that there are full biographical sketches in the back of your materials. And I hope you take a time to read through that. Just because of time, we’re giving brief introductions this morning.

Our moderator for the panel this morning is dealing with the care of widows and orphans. This gentleman is a great friend of mine, personally, we’ve known each other for some time. Reverend John Crosby, Senior Pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Edina, Minnesota.

Now from news features in both Christian and secular press, you may have heard that name and may have heard of the church before. They are sponsoring right now over 1,000 orphans in Rakai, Uganda. Didn’t start that way. It just started with a sponsorship project in what they found out later was the ground zero of the AIDS pandemic. And it just kept growing and growing and growing until finally the church just realized this is their ministry. Like many of the churches that you’re involved with, as well.

John Crosby is noted also in terms of his understanding of the issue and he’ll be introducing our panelists this morning.

Welcome, John Crosby. (audience applause)

Pastor John Crosby:
I think really that I’m here because of the statistics that Rich Stearns mentioned his opening remarks. That the response of the Christian church has frankly been appalling. And how are we in this room to be part of the solution toward making this a statement of just more than rhetoric?

Let me take less than two minutes to show you a little of how that’s happened at Christ Presbyterian and then introduce our panel.

In begins with the idea that it has to be personal. I went to Africa three years ago for the fourth time, but the first time, I took my children on a sabbatical and we spent a month in Kenya and Uganda.

And on Monday, my sixth grader, Maggie, walked into a little makeshift clinic and the nurse handed her a baby that had just come out of a 15 year-old’s womb, and then handed her another baby, and handed her a third baby and she didn’t have another arm. And she saw triplets, literally saw triplets being born on Monday. And on Tuesday, she went with me to another 15 year-old’s mud home and held hands with that 15 year-old who was dying that week of AIDS and held her dying baby in her arms.

For my sixth grader and for her father, it became personal. The church will not respond until it becomes personal.

We as leaders need to find ways to make that happen.

And then once you have a heart for it, it has to become a matter of how can we connect? And I’d say that then the second P– because I’m a pastor – is partnerships.
We need to find partnerships in the realization that churches in the cities and suburbs and countrysides of America cannot all go over to Africa or down to the Caribbean. We need to find people whom we can trust, who share our values and who will be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ with us in that. And it may be for you Compassion, or
World Relief, or Opportunity, or any of the other agencies that we talked about here, but you need to identify partners and realize that no one partner can do it all alone.

We work with four different groups in Rakai, Uganda because one handles community development and a second handles justice issues and a third handles micro-enterprise development and a fourth works with the churches themselves. Partners are the way to make something happen here and in the beginning as well as in the end.

What has helped our church personalize this partnership is a sense that unless we rely on something bigger than the budget of the United States, we’re in major trouble. The children will still die. Their parents will still walk away and put in little graves.

We need to, over and over in our worship services, our small groups and our Bible studies, make this an issue of prayer that we will lift these children and their mommies up to a God who loves them even more than we do.

As we have done that, God has blessed us in the suburbs of Minneapolis far more than our pitiful efforts have managed in Africa. We’d love to tell you more about that.

But it’s our perception that what you need to hear in this hour is that the AIDS pandemic is really pan. It goes all over the map.

And we wanted to offer you three perspectives that would give you the right questions to ask and allow some time for you to interact with us.

We want to start with Mark Connolly. When you go out you will see “Children on the Brink 2002 – The State of HIV/AIDS as it Effects Widows & Orphans.” It is written, essentially, by Mark Connolly for UNICEF. Here is someone who may know more about the plight and the implications of what really happens on the ground than anyone else in the room. And that’s saying a lot.

We’d like to start by giving Mark seven or eight minutes to just paint us a picture and then go on to two of our other presenters. (audience applause)

Mark Connolly:
To paint the picture, I’m going to need the PowerPoint.

Okay, I’d like to thank the organizers for the opportunity to be here at this important event and particularly to World Vision for the seven to eight minute slot to paint the picture on what’s going on.

The most important information to share with you this morning has already been mentioned. It’s not going to come in the presentation, it’s in the back of the room.

“Children on the Brink 2002” has all the estimates of orphans due to all causes and orphans due to AIDS for 88 countries. The point being all the evidence, all the statistics, all the data, all the numbers have been collected and projected. All the information we need to act is already there. The figures are recognized by several UN agencies, all governments that are represented in this report. Everyone agrees these are the figures that we should base our responses on.

Almost as important, in fact, more important I think to many in the room here isn’t the numbers, but what to do about it.

Also in the back of the room is a twelve-page document that has emerged after twenty years of community experience and responding to the crisis. It’s called “Principles to Guide Programmings for Orphans and Other Children Made Vulnerable.”

We’ve put this together, again, distilling from community experiences what is good programming and how communities respond. The point here being is that these children don’t need haphazard handouts, they need principled responses by responsible communities.

The presentation here will be brief. The numbers we’ve seen, again, just to illustrate where the concentrations in the epidemic are now. The darker the colors, the more HIV/AIDS. The point here being that the African continent is quite obvious but not the only place in the world where we’re seeing really enhanced serious epidemic.

Now the most important message on the slides here is from an epidemiological perspective. What are we looking at here? All our talk is on HIV and infection rates and x million people with the virus. Watch what happens here - the delayed effect on what HIV does to cause AIDS to cause death, what does that mean for children?

Those are HIV/AIDS infection curves from around the world. As we all know, from infection to having HIV and AIDS manifest an illness, there’s a few years curve there, a few years delay from infection to when you start getting sick and feeling ill.

This is where we’re at now. I’m looking at infection rates and people with AIDS. This is where we’re going on the infection and, again, the AIDS curves. These are mountains. As I said earlier, almost looking like tidal waves.

Now orphans. The orphan curves start later, not surprisingly. But they have the same increase, the same steepness there. The point here being for all the figures and numbers that we look at in tracking HIV and AIDS, we have to be much more conscious about the third wave of the epidemic. The orphaning epidemic which happens later on the time curve but has the same angles and the same steepness. 25 million orphans die to AIDS by 2010.

And, again, with respect to our colleagues here from Uganda or Thailand or elsewhere where countries have had successes in the response, those orphaning curves haven’t leveled off yet.

The orphaning curve in Uganda will level off in two or three years, perhaps, in Thailand, five or six years.

Any country that has confidence that they’re tackling the epidemic. It’s a false confidence because the orphan issue remains for years to come.

Hardest hit countries, again, just to show figures. The point here being, there are several countries now in sub-Saharan Africa where 1 in 5 children are orphaned or 1 in 4 children are orphaned. That’s where the biggest brunt of this epidemic is being felt now.

Just to measure from a global perspective, how do you get a sense whether orphans are better off or worse off or what’s going on? It’s pretty clear, we know from common sense that they’re less likely to be in school, less likely to be well nourished, less likely to have access to other opportunities. But this is just a snapshot on the figure on schooling.

Disparity across the world. If you’ve lost both parents, you’re less likely to be in school. The disparity just illustrated it. Take Mozambique, for example. 68% of Mosambiquean kids, between the age of 10 and 14 are in school today. But if you’re a double orphan, if you’ve lost both your mother and your father, only 24% of those children are in school. And, again, this is just to illustrate these disparity gaps. Much of our efforts in responding to the crisis is to bridge those gaps.

Who’s caring for orphans? Again, just a snapshot of some statistics and figures. But it’s an important point here for all of us who are trying to scale up their responses and respect families and communities.

Zimbabwe on the left, grandparents are carrying the heaviest load. They’re providing the most care followed by brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, other relatives, fostering and adoption.

And interestingly enough, the point on Zimbabwe is a) grandparents are carrying the biggest load b) the families are caring for everyone.

The family is the front line of the response even when parents are dying. Extended families, while stressed and strained, are responding.

Ethiopia, on the other side, we see a different pattern on who’s caring for kids. The same point though – adoption, fostering is the minority response. Extended families is the majority response and that has to be respected and supported.

Four key areas of action, just to list as far as what needs to be done and how to do it. Equal access to basic services. Much of the effort to responding to orphan’s issues is an issue of equity, reduced disparity. Don’t do things specifically for orphans. Find out where the gaps are on orphans. Whether orphans have access to water and nutrition. Whatever development work we’re involved in, find out where the gaps are and bridge them.

Second, psychological and emotional support for families. I’ve listed a bunch of things there. You’ll hear much more today on front line responses and who’s doing what.

The point here being, psychological and emotional support for families is not a doctor in a white coat where I live in New York going to a therapy session. It’s families who know how to deal with these issues and need to be supported.

We may have to translate our language on family support into psychological support to wrestle down some of the big money that’s out there, but that’s where the money needs to go to help families cope.

Third, inheritance and protection legislation. Birth registration, will writing, laws. There are many, many countries that don’t have good legislative environments in which children when they lose their parents can benefit from transfers of materials, goods and households.

We hear a lot about property grabbing and children and widows ending up with absolutely nothing. Someone’s got to work on legislation front and make a difference.

Last but not least, prolonging the lives of parents. The most important point here is if you talk to kids who are living with the virus in their household and within their families.

We can have all our lists of important things to do. Most important thing to do is keep parents alive. That’s what everyone wants. And the point here is much of the discussion on that is caught up in the price of anti-retroviral drugs or it’s 13,000 down to 300 down to 200. And in the world I work in, in the UN and the bilateral, that’s where all the attention is.

The fact of the matter is, better nutrition, better well being - spiritual, physical and emotional prolongs lives for years. We’ll hear from Ugandan and Zambian colleagues here on positive living packages.

Living positively has all sorts of interventions that need low cost support. Just providing treatment for opportunist infections, antibiotics that cost less than a dollar a month, can prolong the lives of millions of parents in the world today. We can’t be distracted by the anti-retroviral discussion. Yes, it’s important. Yes, a lot of the Washington money that we’ve heard about today – that’s where it’s going – high priced drugs. We need to compensate on the other side with basic well being and care and support.

Specific point here, institutional care. Residential care should be a last resort. Yes, there are children who are left with absolutely nothing. Yes, there are young children living with AIDS.

There’s no question about it that institutional care and support is an intervention area but it should be the last resort. It conflicts with the rights of children to grow up within a family setting and grow up in a family environment. And increasing institutional care to quote several colleagues from sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, it’s expensive. We all know that and it’s an expensive solution that often expands the problem. There’s no question about it.

If there were 100 more orphanages placed in Zambia today, they would fill up overnight. And they would have high costs and they would fill up again and again and again. It’s an important response but it should be last resort.

Finally, with all these lists of interventions and things to do, what we’re looking for outcome wise is mobilized communities that continue to protect and care for their children.

Getting and keeping kids in school is fundamental. It’s the ticket to better opportunities.

We need more inheritance and protection. Kids need to inherit what’s left behind. Parents need to live longer. And vital registration, including birth certificates…specific point here, it sounds simple, birth certificates, birth registration, it takes money, it takes effort, it takes commitment. And this isn’t talking about children when they’re born getting a birth certificate. Every orphan in the world today who doesn’t have a certificate needs that proof of citizenship that they exist whether their parents are alive or not to get their entitlements through public heath and education systems.

Bottom-line; last slide, the challenge we’re talking about and the response here is scale. We need to scale up what’s going on. We need orphans and vulnerable children, that acronym up there, OVC. It needs to be on the political agenda and on the resource agenda for a long time to come.

A billion dollars a year. Where does that figure come from? If there’s $55.00 per year dedicated to orphan issues around the world today per orphan, that’s what it would add up to. $55.00 a year per child. I don’t care what is a low cost. But it adds up very quickly. That’s a minimum amount. We need to talk billions.

Three powerful partnerships, global and regional. No one can do this alone.

And last, UNICEF, the organization I represent, the UN agencies, we need to be much stronger. Like many of yourselves, we are not completely proud of our past in responding to the scale of this issue and we need to be much more proactive with broader partnerships.

Thank you. (audience applause)

John Crosby:
Obviously, an impossible job but a great start. Thank you, Mark.

We’d like to shift gears and talk about how the ripple effects of HIV/AIDS spread past the visible things that we see on the news. We’ve asked Mr. Gary Haugen to come. He is the President of IJM, International Justice Ministries, which he comes by the Justice Department to investigating on behalf of the UN. The genocide in Rwanda to now taking on the cause of justice for those who like the widows and orphans have no one to stand up for them. Gary? (audience applause)

Gary Haugen:
Thanks, John, very much. And thank you for the opportunity to be with you here this morning.

As someone who has been in Washington, D.C. for a good bit of time, I do have to say that there is nothing that I have seen disrupt people’s stereotypes of evangelicals than the attempt by the evangelical community to respond to the AIDS epidemic.

I spend most of my time with people who don’t really darken the doorway of a church and many times their stereotypes of evangelicals are really not all that flattering. Especially as they regard to the needs of hurting people around the world.

But I have to say that the attempt, this thing that has begun in such a day as this, is shattering people’ stereotypes. And as an evangelical, I’m grateful for that.

The Word tells us that we’re supposed to be ready to give a reason for the hope that is within us. And there is nothing that will crush hope like this epidemic. And there is a need for Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, to give the rest of the world a reason to hope, but to do it with humility.

Solzhenitsyn said there are two standards by which we judge events in the world - two simple standards. Whether the event is far or near. And that we judge something as to whether it’s a bearable disaster of tolerable proportions by that standard. Is the disaster near or far?

And in many ways this crisis is far from us, but it is not a bearable disaster of tolerable proportions. And I think and hope that it is the church here in the United States that will be able to get Americans to actually see that this is an unbearable crisis.

I’d like to share just a few thoughts about the great engine of the AIDS epidemic. It comes from a perspective of a human rights organization. The International Justice Mission is a Christian collection of Christian lawyers, criminal investigators, government relation’s experts. And we get case referrals from Christian ministry serving amongst the poor around the world. Cases of illegal detention and torture, sexual abuse, sex trafficking and so on.

And what I would like to suggest is that the AIDS epidemic in Africa, but also in other parts of the world exists within a world of violence against women and girls. And it’s a world of violence that we have not perhaps otherwise paid attention to. But AIDS will force us to look at the reality of violence in our world, and violence against children and violence against women.

Not only the existence of violence but also how fundamentally broken public justice systems are in the developing world. So broken that basic protections of your body, of your bodily integrity are utterly broken. And unless they are fixed, this will just keep running up.

Two simple implications for the epidemic. That the sexual violence and violence against women and girls profoundly effects how the disease is spread. And it profoundly effects the vulnerability that then faces those who are widowed and those who are orphaned. A vulnerability to violence and to dispossession.

First, a world of sexual violence profoundly effects how the disease is spread.

Sexual violence is one of the great engines driving the AIDS epidemic, certainly in Africa and other parts of the world. And it’s not a cause that is addressed by our traditional methodologies.

When I say sexual violence, I’m referring to simple rape, but also the forms of sexual assault that are driven by money, called sex trafficking or commercial sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse.

A survey in South Africa showed that 78% of HIV positive women, 78%, reported that they had been forced to have sex.

Most sub-Saharan African countries show that between 25% and 40% of women and girls report that their first sexual encounter was forced.

What does that actually look like in our world?

Well, it helps to have a face to it. This is Nagendo, 17 years old. A typical story from much of Africa and much of the developing world. She’s a young girl living in the city. 15 years old on her way to do some shopping when a man brutally attacked, gagged her and raped her. Immediately after the rape, Nagendo arrived home with her clothes torn and told her mother what had happened. They quickly went to the police station to report the incident. They underwent an exam. Clearly proved rape. And actually the police knew the man who had committed the rape. However, the police encouraged Nagendo and her mother to let the boy alone and dismiss the incident. The rapist was actually a neighbor of Nagendo. And she is continually faced with living in fear after being attacked.

The man walks past her home almost daily, walks by her home almost daily calling out to her. He also brags that he cannot be locked up for his crime because he has witchcraft to protect him. He has done this for the past year and half, even after pleas from the victim and her family; the police refused to arrest the young man.

For those of you who know much about the developing world, this is not a remote story. This is not something that’s unheard of.

Or the other face. Teresa, nine years old. Perhaps more familiar in many settings – repeatedly raped by her father and then threatened with a butcher knife at each time afterwards if she goes and tells anyone.

She finally has the strength to tell her mother about this. Her mother takes her to the police. The police file a report, but two days later; the father is arrested and placed in jail. But then the father’s brothers come by, pay a bribe to the police and he’s back out on the street. And the police help destroy the medical records and destroy much of the evidence that could be used to apprehend him.

The other familiar face of sexual violence, of course, in Africa is the face of sex trafficking. Hundreds of thousands of children are sold into forced prostitution.

This is a young woman who has trafficked from Nigeria to Ivory Coast, again, with a story that she would get a job inside the city there. When she arrives, her papers are taken away. Instead she’s taken into a sex trafficking ring where she’s forced to provide sex to the customers there.

This is the actual face of what the AIDS epidemic looks like.

The epidemic of AIDS in Africa is there because there’s also an epidemic of sexual violence in Africa and other parts of the world.

There’s a reason why UNICEF has found that for every boy 15-19, who’s infected in sub-Saharan African countries, there’s five to six girls infected of the same age.

Steven Lewis has said that in the case of Africa, the pandemic is now conclusively an irreversible and ferocious assault on women and girls.

The other part of this story, and my bodyguard has arisen up to my right here, is simply something that you may know much about and that is simply that once the man dies frequently of AIDS, he leaves a vulnerable widow and orphans who are just pushed off their land. In many times the laws are actually there on the books to be able to successfully restore them to their land, but they need a legal advocates.

In a place like Uganda with 30 million people, there’s about 350 lawyers for the entire country. Who gets those lawyers?

If there were more time, the story would not be of doom and gloom, because each one of those stories of those rapes or victims of sex trafficking that you’ve seen, are actually those who’ve been rescued out of those situations where the perpetrators have been brought to justice. And likewise the case for efforts made to strengthen public justice systems to bring the perpetrators of abuse to where they belong, and that is off the streets.

It’s possible if we take seriously the violent aspect of the AIDS epidemic to actually strengthen public justice systems in a way that restore basic protections to women and children.

Thank you very much. (audience applause)

John Crosby:
Before we get to your questions, we’d like to give you a brief voice from the field.

Bishop, I was going to say thank you….(laughing)…she’s freaking out . I understand.

Bishop Joshua Banda represents the folks in Africa who see this on a daily basis. In his work going beyond the Assembly of God church, he has traveled extensively through Africa trying to bring people together in issues of faith, and prevention, and health.
Bishop Banda. (audience applause)

Bishop Banda:
Thank you very much. While the presentation is being brought up here, let me make some acknowledgments. First of all, thank you very much to World Vision International, and World Relief International Association of Evangelicals, and everybody else that’s involved in making this possible. I guess, what have I left out, (unreadable) is MAP International. Very important.

I think that this is a significant meeting. You will get to hear later, I left a newborn baby, born on Friday. I was coming close to wondering the truth between my family and coming here. By the Grace of God the baby was born on 9:41 PM Friday night. And I….(audience applause)…

That’s our fourth baby, fourth child. 12, 9, 6 and now this one zero. Hopefully, we are done. (audience laughing)

But I felt like Simon in the Bible and said now I can depart in peace. And my wife’s said, “Are you dying?” I said, “No.” Now I can depart to go the U.S. “This is a significant meeting.” I may not have chance to say this at the end, but I would like to commend the four core sponsors.

This goes down in the record of heaven. I believe it also goes down in the record of our nations as to what it will do here in America and for the global response that is focusing on our (unreadable) now.

I also with to acknowledge the very important person here. I must do this to feel all righteousness. Her excellence, Dr. (unreadable), the Ambassador (unreadable)…for the embassy of the Republic of Zambia here in Washington, D.C. I’ll ask her to stand.
(audience applause)

She’s one of the many, through her appointments with different organizations including UNICEF in the past, who’ve made a major difference for the plight of children in Zambia. And she’s born again and committed evangelical Christian. I’d like those of you here in Washington D.C. to know that. And so I’m very glad that she is here.

I do have some people from the Assemblies of God fellowship here. I feel very supported so I must acknowledge every one of them.

I think all is ready so let me get going because the count begins now.

The plight of widows and orphans, we should move straight to the left…the very next….