Force for Change

About the Theme:

World AIDS Campaign with Young People

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and its co-sponsors and partners have chosen to focus the 1998 World AIDS Campaign on young people. The main reasons for this focus are:

• Over 50% of new infections with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, are now occurring in young people in the 10-24 age group. Young people are particularly vulnerable to HIV infection and are being very seriously affected by the epidemic.
• Young people have the power to change the course of the epidemic. Young people are not only being infected and affected by HIV/AIDS, but they are also a key resource in mobilizing an expanded and effective response.

The campaign will be a chance to sustain the momentum created during last year's campaign on the theme of "Children living in a world with AIDS" and to build on some of the initiatives that were begun over the past months. Similarly, it is hoped that the activities initiated during the course of this year will be carried over beyond the year-end, and that the campaign will be seen as an occasion to develop new approaches and to achieve consensus about what needs to be done in both the immediate future and the longer-term.

The theme that has been selected for the 1998 campaign is "Force for Change: World AIDS Campaign with Young People". This highlights the intention of the Steering Committee that the campaign be used as a real opportunity to set up and strengthen processes for involving young people in reducing the spread of HIV, as well as mobilizing support for young people who are already suffering from the impact of the epidemic on their own lives, their families and their communities. The campaign also provides a platform for emphasizing the links between HIV/AIDS and other factors that are critical to young people's health and development including, in this anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the promotion and protection of their rights.

In preparing this campaign, UNAIDS has been advised by a Steering Committee composed of its cosponsors (UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, UNESCO, WHO, and World Bank) as well as the Association François-Xavier Bagnoud, Education International, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, MTV International, Rotary International, and the World Assembly of Youth.

This document has been reproduced by the United Methodist HIV/AIDS Ministries Network, Room 330, 475 Riverside Drive, NY, NY 10115 from the UNAIDS web site. E-mail: aidsmin@gbgm-umc.org.