Global Apartheid: AIDS and Murder

The US government under the Bush administration has been accused of defending global apartheid due to its controversial approach to the AIDS pandemic. The authors question how future administration will approach this issue and whether they will shift policies to aid in ending this apartheid. But recent literature and news across the world have shown that the US and other major nations are cutting back their funding for AIDs eradication effort. Such acts reinforce the truth behind claims by the authors and shows that global apartheid is not only an idea but a reality. While the United States tries to show that approach to the quest of AIDS cannot be rights based, scholars have shown that AIDS prevalence is directly proportional to the level of poverty and the quality of education.

This shows that globalization must not continue to enhance global apartheid and the components of current globalization which make this possible must be altered to enhance global democracy. The failure to give due consideration to AIDS is a failure to give due consideration to the factors which helps spread AIDS. This resistance to accept that the provision of medical drugs and other services are a fundamental right is a practice which fuels global apartheid by denying the world’s poor what is commonly provided the rich. Add the negative impacts to heath care in poor nations due to meddling by foreign powers and other bodies like the World Bank and you create a crisis of foreign origin. Over all, the failure by world powers to offer adequate resources o fight the AIDs pandemic is a reflection of their unwillingness to end global apartheid which is characterized by unfair distribution of resources based on race, region and class.

Issues relating to Global Apartheid and Globalization

The move by the pharmaceutical giants to bring a suit against the government of the sovereign Republic of South Africa in a bid to stop the government’s effort to give people living with HIV access to cheap drugs is a clear indication of continued global apartheid. The law in question had been passed in the year 1997 by the legislature as one of the radical measures to curb the drastic effect of the HIV pandemic on the South African society. A pandemic which had caused immense devastation through a populace already fraught with poverty and burdened by the weight of one of the most unequal societies in the world. Inequality borne of prolonged colonizati0on which saw some of the worst oppression the modern world has ever seen. Oppression propagated though apartheid in a system which promoted the interest of the white majority by denying the black majority equal opportunities and a say in the matters of their own country.

The actions of this drug cartel were equal to those of the colonizers since their suit sought to suppress the interest of the local people as their tried to maintain their profit margins. This clearly is apartheid by a group of global multi nationals and the authors are right to call it global apartheid.  The demonstrations across the global community against this suit show that this case is bigger than just economics and cuts through both politics and the social welfare of the affected people. These civil actions are reminiscent of past demonstrations in apartheid South Africa during the Boer rule and they can be seen to represent an uprising of what the authors have come to refer as global apartheid. This is made worse by the fact that over 2.4 million deaths from AIDS related complications are found in Sub Saharan African.

AIDS in Africa is a “manifestation of global apartheid,” as the authors explain in this article. As pointed earlier in the paper, 2.4 million deaths from the global average of 3 millions are found in Sub Saharan Africa. The implications of this statistics according to the author shows that most deaths from AIDS are found in regions where most people can’t afford life saving drugs due to poverty and the selfish actions of pharmaceutical companies. This means that the access to antiretroviral drugs and other life prolonging drugs are determined by the basis of racial consideration, geographical location of the affected populace and class factors. North America on which the United States of America falls has a mortality rate from AIDS of 20,000. But the US and Canada are two of the ten richest countries in the world with enough capability to ensure that all their affected citizens have access.

 Yet these nations are the governments on whose nation these major pharmaceuticals originate from and they do nothing to ensure the same access to drugs for poor nations across the globe. All this despite their hypocritical claim that they are helping in the war against the AIDS pandemic but only make small donations whose impact is limited and ineffective. According to the author, AIDS can be seen to be just one of the indicators of international injustice whereby the poor nations are glad to advocate for policies which benefit them without necessarily benefiting poor nations. This in fact is global apartheid and any attempt to hide the issue doesn’t negate this truth.  The issue of AIDS and the provision of vital drugs can be proven to contain bias in the way drugs are distributed in terms of race, economical strength, political influence and the privileges accorded certain classes.

Globalization has emerged as one of the most important words of modern times and has been used to denote major changes in the way the world relates. Globalization is usually used in economical circles as an explanation of the current phenomenon which has seen international boundaries lose much meaning and trade liberalized between most nations in the world. But the authors of this article have highlighted the dangers of not looking into the fine prints of the globalization blue print. To them, globalization hides within its broader context several faults since the ideal is biased and benefits richer Western nations while having little or no benefits to poorer nations. The AIDS debate is just one way which exposes the fault lines within the ideas propagated by the proponents of globalization. If the developed countries have the interests of the lesser developed countries at heart, why then are the AIDS statistics so varied? Because globalization is an idea of a few elites and does not really encompass the welfare of the larger and poor majorities of the global populace.

How then can we approach the issue of globalization and in doing so enact equitable approaches to global issues like the AIDS pandemic? According to the authors, the only way is to ask ourselves what kind of our world we want to make and what kind of a legacy we want to pass to future generations. The authors highlights other issues which must be considered in tandem with AIDS among them being debt reduction for poor nations and racism as it affects minorities in white countries. But at the end of this debate lies the truth. That current globalization practices do not promote the human rights of people living in poor nations and the only ay globalization will cease it be viewed as global apartheid is to redress this situation and grant all people regardless of race equal human rights status and empowerment.

Conclusion

The only way to end global apartheid is to force rich and powerful nations to stop exploiting the resources of poor nations without giving significant assistance towards the development of these nations. Some of the issues highlighted as likely to assist towards this goal is increased and adequate funding of efforts aimed at ending the AIDs pandemic, reduction or cancellation of debts owed by poor nations and ceasing to attach unrealistic and burdensome conditions while providing loans and grants. The issue of global apartheid has been demonstrated to be as serious as constituting life and death scenarios. It is time that global leader decided to unite against global apartheid and replace it with what the authors of this article refer to as global democracy.