FORUM

FORUM: General Assembly

QUESTION OF: Caring for AIDS Orphans GENERAL ASSEMBLY,

Profoundly Concerned by statistics showing that there are an estimated 15 million AIDS orphans world wide and that this figure is set to rise to 18.4 million by 2010, 62,000 of which are predicted to be in the Su an,

Defining AIDS orphans as children who have lost their mother, father or both parents to AIDS before reaching the age of 15,

Noting that there are many projects and organisations in place promoting caring for AIDS orphans however if we are to resolve the issue of caring for AIDS orphans, we need to unify these programmes and organisations to make a world wide difference,

Applauding UNICEF, LJNAIDS, the WHO and NGOs in their work to enroll AIDS orphans in schools, providing shelter and proper nutrition as well as access to health care, other social services, housing schemes and hopes that that they will continue these efforts to provide care for AIDS orphans,

Hopes that all the UN nations, will regard the care for AIDS orphans projects within UNICEF not as further unnecessary bureaucracy or an invasion of national sovereignty, but as a commission to support information, advice, and unification to help governments worldwide promote and set about caring for AIDS orphans

Recognizing that the best possible care for AIDS orphans is to be achieved if they remain within their own community and family rather than relying on institutional housing and care facilities,

Approving all UN members continued efforts to meet the United Nations Millennium Development

Goals (MDG) to provide a stronger social environment in which to care for and protect orphans of

AIDS,

I . Urges all UN member nations to take the initiative following the examples of nations like Eritrea, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Botswana in setting up their own national plans and projects to help care for AIDS orphans within the confines of their individual social environments and respecting the varying need of different ethnic, religious and cultural communities;

2. Suggests that all nations suffering from the crisis of how to care for AIDS orphans should come together at the International AIDS Conference, specifically to discuss plans and programmes they are augmenting within their own country, with the African Union taking a leading role, to allow the rest of the world to benefit from their successful projects and learn from their unsuccessful ones;

3. Calls for the setting up of a special commission within UNICEF, to be called the Care for AIDS Orphans Project (CAOP), to act as a central commission to unify and oversee all existing UN AIDS orphan-related projects, with further national sub-commissions established in UN member states following per-missions from each nation's government, to offer advice and help orchestrate national programmes which will provide an annual report to the CAOP on the nation's progress and current action, the sub section's tasks will include, but not be limited to:

a) offering advice, finance and support to Governments and regionally based governing bodies on existing and future projects improving care for AIDS Orphans,

b) taking a leading role in providing education for AIDS orphans and their communities, promoting safe housing and placing schemes and providing affordable and effective medical support,

C) providing a network of communication and co-operation between government agencies, existing non governmental agencies, hospitals, schools, adoption projects, institutional housing and care facilities in order to maximize the efficiency and potential of all existing and future projects by uniting and working together,

d) overseeing and monitoring the progress of all current and future action plans to insure that funding and orphans themselves are not abused and continue to receive high levels of care;

4. Requests the creation of a sub-committee of the CAOP which will be specifically responsible for educating communities about the reality of AIDS orphans and importance of supporting and caring for them, in order to erase all existing negative stigmas attached to AIDS orphans and establish a strong community system to be ready to accept, help protect and support AIDS orphans, through the following two approaches:

a) in More Economically Developed Countries (MEDCS) and nations with high levels of communications by strategies including, but not limited to:

ii) orchestrating publicity campaigns through all suitable forms of media to help educate the general public about the importance of AIDS orphans as regular members of society and remove the stigma that is attached to them,

iii) establishing workshops and educational programmes within the community to provide more direct forms of education,

b) in Less Economically Developed Countries (LEDCS) and nations with poor levels of literacy, communication and widely dispersed communities the committee will:

i) send trained community workers (TRWS) taken from the aforementioned countries, into communities to identify community leaders including, but not exclusive to: teachers, doctors and nurses and offer them education as to the importance of caring for AIDS orphans with the incentive of providing other community related services, specific to the needs and requirements of the community, including, but not limited to: medical advice, means to extract water or fanning equipment,

ii) provide the encouragement, support and resources for these community peers to set up work shops in local schools and community meeting places and use their position of respect and authority within the community to begin informing and providing information for the general public concerning AIDS orphans, with help and support from the TRWs to help to correct common community misconceptions towards AIDS orphans and remove the stigma attached to the orphans,

iii) establish communication links with the communities so that the CAOP can continue to monitor the progress of the education programmes to insure their continued success as well as keeping records of the numbers of orphans and their state of care within the particular community they have visited to help build a greater awareness of the state of care for AIDS orphans on a national and worldwide scale;

5. Recommends the creation of a further sub-committee of the CAOP which in combination with the world's governments will set about providing a safe and efficient housing and placing projects for orphans with the priority of placing them within their own or extended families and within their own community whilst recognizing the necessity of retaining and implementing institutional care facilities to help cope with the crisis in the short ten-n but with the express goal of phasing them out as soon as possible in favour of more personal placing policies, the committee will also:

a) act as a centre for distributing support and aid for families, who are willing to integrate and have successfully integrated orphans into their families, but who would otherwise have difficulty supporting another child including, but not limited to: farming materials, subsidized schooling for children and access to health care,

b) set about establishing centres in communities which are for the purpose of but not limited to:

i) providing a centre for specific education designed to help the orphans begin to take responsibility to care for and help themselves, come to terms with their situation and regain a sense of confidence and self-esteem whilst under the protection and support of the community environment,

ii) making available sexual education programmes to make the AIDS orphans aware of the problems involved with unprotected intercourse and the risk of transmitting STDS including HIV,

111) offering medical attention and support for AIDS orphans, specifically concerned with opportunistic infections caused by immunity deficiency, other AIDS related illness's and how properly to administer Anti Retro-Viral drug treatment in pediatric and adolescent cases,

iv) act as a centre for care and support for AIDS orphans and the families who are caring for them and have the facilities to provide respite care for these families through providing:

1. employment and professional/vocational training for the caretakers of AIDS orphans who have not yet reached retirement age,

2. larger pensions for elderly grandparents who must take care of orphaned children according to the number of children they must look after,

V) act as a medium and an environment through which orphans are able to begin resuming a normal life style and participation within their communities,

vi) promote the inclusion of community peers, leaders and especially older orphans as peer counsellors and mentors, to support the younger orphans, act as someone with whom they can associate with, as well as building the older children's sense of responsibility and confidence to prepare them for a leading role with in their society,

vii) train all prospective foster or adoptive parents in the psychological and medical needs of the AIDS orphans, and ensure their responsibility and competence in parenting,

maintaining and bring up to date temporary facilities for providing shelter food,

medical care and protection for street children and other orphans while they are being placed with a family,

d) will set up programmes and links with families who have taken on children to make sure the children continue to receive a high level of care and that these families are provided with the resources to offer it;

6. Encourages all member nation governments, to create and implement national laws to protect inheritance rights of orphans, as well as laws to further outlaw and eliminate child trafficking, prostitution, child soldiers and other such violations of human rights and for these laws to be enforced to the full extent of the nation's ability;

7. Hopes that all governments recognize the importance of maintaining AIDS orphans in school, especially from a young age to maintain a normal position in society free from the stigma attached to them and gain the ability to reap the benefits of a full education and with many efforts to increase levels of school attendance amongst AIDS orphans, through methods including but not exclusive to:

a) providing support and benefits for families caring for AIDS orphans, such as subsidized school fees so that it may become financially viable for the family to allow the child to go to school, especially in societies where children are expected to go out and work and contribute to the family from a young age,

b) making HIV awareness and sexual health a part of the curriculum

C) encouraging and supporting local businesses and craftsmen to offer apprenticeships to AIDS orphans within their community, to enable AIDS orphans to have the skills and training to take on equal job opportunities as other children in the future;

8. Implores governments with support from the WHO, UNICEF and the CAOP to introduce courses and educational programmes for training doctors within the country specifically in treating HIV/AIDS and the complicating opportunistic infections such as Tuberculosis, Toxoplasmosis, Cryptococcus caused by immune deficiencies and Pneumocystis cancers such as Lymphoma which commonly occur in people suffering from HIV and AIDS, whilst respecting the specialist needs of pediatric and adolescent populations, as well as learning how properly to administer anti retroviral drugs therapy;

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9. Further implores member states in combination with NGOS, including, but not exclusive to: the WHO, UNICEF and the CAOP to take steps to develop, improve and implement programmes for preventing mother-to-child transmission by:

a) providing antenatal care to detect HIV positive mothers and establishing a course of care to prevent transmission,

b) counselling and educating mothers of the risk of transmission from breast feeding,

C) administering courses of anti-retroviral prophylaxis in the last weeks of pregnancy or at delivery to reduce the risk of transmission,

d) educating mothers and fathers of the benefits of Caesarean birth in reducing the risk of transmission and making such treatment more available.