LUKMEF President Speaks at the UN
Speaking during the UN review meeting on HIV and AIDS that took place in New York from the 31 to the 2nd of June 2006, the LUKMEF president said the time for African leaders to make complete commitments and stand by them is more urgent now than ever before. The civil society should recommit themselves as an integral part of this fight by assisting national governments in implementing the agreed points of commitment without compromising their rule as advocates. Speaking during the civil society consultation on the New UN declaration, Mr. Tanyi Christian lamented the fact that most government see civil society as competitors rather than collaborators in bringing better services to the population. Mr. Tanyi Christian stood firm on the point that if the new declaration is going to be as weak as it seems to be, then civil society organizations at country levels will have even much work to do to get a good blend of the old declaration and the new one to be able to make reasonable progress in the fight against the AIDS pandemic. “Civil societies at country level should elaborate national declarations and vigorously respect them to complement the new UN declaration. Africa is heading for a catastrophe if we continue to bury our heads in the sand in times of such huge human crises” he added. LUKMEF monitored Cameroon’s level of implementation of the African heads of states declaration in which they agreed to commit 15% of their national budgets on Health by 2005. Cameroon had hardly gone above 5% as shown by the study report published by ActionAid international during the ICASA conference that took place in Nigeria in 2005. In that same year, LUKMEF also conducted a national monitoring of the government’s implementation of the United Nation General Assembly Special Session on AIDS (UNGASS) in which world leaders agreed on a number of issues and targets. Though this report showed marked progress in Cameroon’s level of implementation, a good number of weak points still exist and needed urgent redress. The report that was also published by ICASO and distributed during the UN review meeting shaded more light on how governments are doing and what they still need to do. After all efforts to get sponsorship to attend the review meeting failed, the board of directors of LUKMEF decided to do a self sponsor to allow the President take part in the review meeting. “It will be a disaster if we stay out of this meeting and no other civil society in Cameroon is represented” the board president said Following the outcome of the meeting, more work is now underway to develop a more solid national declaration that will be presented during the women’s conference on AIDS planed for the 28th of November to the 1st of December 2006 in Limbe, Cameroon.