The AIDS pandemic effects not only those who sub-come to the deadly disease, but to both their families and communities. Villages have been stripped of generations, families have fallen apart, and children have been orphaned in extraordinary numbers. The long reaching effects of HIV/AIDS cannot be ignored, and nor can the children for which it has left behind.
- Over 15 million children worldwide have lost one or both parents to AIDS. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, over 12 million children have been orphaned by the pandemic.
- Experts believe that millions more orphans remain unaccounted for in India, China and Russia.
- By 2010, the number of AIDS orphans worldwide is expected to reach at least 20 million.
Children are not only left traumatized by the death of one or both of their parents, but also remain heavily stigmatized by the disease which has led many children to be turned out to the streets and left many children in poverty.
World AIDS Orphans Day has surprisingly has its roots on Wall Street, as it began with a demonstration on Wall Street in 2002, as activists carried signs that read: "What is the value of an orphan on the New York stock exchange?” The fight six years later has hardly changed, and the face of the largest victims to the pandemic remain the same. Children who are orphaned by AIDS are some of the worlds most vulnerable children, often born into struggle, all raised with the stigma and the fear of the disease. Each child left to fight for both the present and the future, disadvantaged and left behind they are a generation of instability that affects the entire global nation;
"There are many, many awful problems in this world today, but our first task is to raise the next generation in a way that they can become productive citizens and not become child soldiers or terrorists or drug dealers or prostitutes or whatever. All the things we're seeing,"says Albina du Boisrouvray of the FXB Foundation (VOA).
Therefore today is a grassroots campaign which calls upon donor countries to commit at least 10% of their AIDS funding to that of the needs of AIDS orphans and vulnerable children. Let us look to a future where a generation is not orphaned to disease and left to struggle against poverty, violence and stigma. For more information please see World Aids Orphans.
