Washington, DC — Congresswoman Barbara Lee has represented the Ninth District of California in the House of Representatives since her election in 1998. She is the Co-Chair of the Progressive Caucus, Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Task Force on Global HIV/Aids, Whip for the CBC, and a member of the House International Relations Committee and Financial Services Committee. She previously served in the California State Assemby from 1990-1996 and California State Senate from 1996-1998. Lee graduated from Mills College in 1973 and earned a Master's degree in Social Work from the University of California, Berkeley in 1975.
Lee spoke on her past efforts to fund HIV/Aids prevention and treatment programs on the African continent, as well as prospects for the future, as part of the Ambassador Andrew Young Lecture Series on May 12, 2004 at the Nigerian Embassy in Washington, D.C. The Lecture Series is organized by the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa.
Thank you, Ambassador Young, for that wonderful introduction.
Your work continues to serve as an inspiration for all of us, and I am extremely honored to participate as the first woman in your lecture series. I'm especially honored that you introduced me to our distinguished audience here tonight. And let me also thank you for your consistency and commitment in the midst of storms.
Your record of achievement over the last 50 years has been exceptional. From Minister to civil rights leader, to Executive Director and Vice President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to serving as a Member of Congress, then Ambassador to the United Nations, then Mayor of Atlanta, and co-chairman of the Centennial Olympic Games in 1996, to receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom - you deserve our appreciation.
Let me also thank Leonard Robinson and Bernadette Paolo for their bold and inspiring leadership and the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa and the staff for organizing this event and for inviting me to speak tonight.
Let me also thank the members of the Diplomatic Corps for being here tonight and for representing your countries so well.
As you know, the Africa Society's mission is to educate all Americans about Africa and its people, to build bridges of understanding and partnership, and to facilitate the Continent's social development and political transition to more open, democratic societies.
I believe that the Andrew Young Lecture Series plays a very important role in that regard, and I want to thank the Africa Society for their work in organizing and publicizing this event.
I also want to thank the acting Ambassador and the Embassy of Nigeria for opening its doors and inviting us all into this beautiful embassy tonight.
Over the last 24 years, I've had the chance to visit your great country Mr. Ambassador, many times. My last visit to Nigeria was with President Bill Clinton in August of 2000. It was an amazing visit and I had the chance to hear President Clinton speak to an audience about the global battle against HIV/AIDS.
On another occasion in December of 1999, I visited Nigeria with former Congressman Sam Gejdenson. We happened to be there on World AIDS Day and had the opportunity to meet with a number of officials regarding HIV/AIDS.
I also had the privilege to be an election observer during the Presidential elections in March of 1999. Given our track record in the US during the last election, I want to suggest that Nigeria consider sending an observer to the United States to return the favor.
But seriously, I look forward to returning to your beautiful country again.
I also want to thank all of you for your attendance tonight. It's so good to see such a large turnout, with so many dear friends. I'm very honored by your presence.
We are all here tonight because we are bound by a common purpose and a common belief that whatever our background, nationality, or religious belief, Africa matters. As the cradle of life, the birthplace of civilization, we are all tied in some way by a common thread to Africa and to the African people.
This thread for me is quite personal, and it has furthered my unwavering commitment to Africa throughout my life. Because for me, Africa is more than just serving as a member of the Subcommittee on Africa.
I have had the opportunity to visit the continent many times, traveling to Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, Gabon, Zambia, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Ghana, and several other countries. And I've also organized and taken several delegations to Africa from my district, while serving in the California Legislature and now in the US Congress.
But I still haven't been to every country in Africa yet, and that's one of the things that I'm looking forward to doing in the coming years.
Collectively, my visits to Africa have given me a deep appreciation of the African people, their everyday struggles, and their success and achievements. And for me personally a clear understanding of who I am as an African American woman and what my duties and responsibilities are to my glorious motherland.
After every visit, I have left Africa with a renewed sense of hope for what is possible.
Today, Africa is experiencing a new transformation. And the growth of regional organizations, the African Union, NEPAD, and other pan-African initiatives and institutions has brought the continent closer together than ever before.
Yet we still have outbreaks of civil conflict and war.
Today, Africans are getting poorer and hungrier, and HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria threaten the survival of entire nations. The breakdown of African communities is causing the breakdown of state and regional governance.
This in turn has allowed opportunistic individuals, companies, and nations, including the United States, to exploit the absence of state authority and governing institutions, and the natural resources vital to the economic and developmental growth of a nation.
Of the many issues that are endangering African communities today, HIV/AIDS has been the most significant. Obviously, this disease is not specific to Africa, and I am especially sad to say that it has continued its rampage here in the US, and particularly within the African-American community in my district in California.
But in Africa, with an estimated 30 million people infected, HIV/AIDS presents a tremendous social, economic and political challenge. Already much of Africa has begun to feel the devastating effects of this dreaded disease.
I want to stress however, that the problem of HIV/AIDS and the burden of dealing with it is not Africa's responsibility alone. Collectively, we are all in this struggle together, as AIDS is a global problem, and everyone must help carry the burden.
Because HIV/AIDS isn't confined to one particular class or country. HIV is an insidious virus, and it spreads indiscriminately. It infects the rich and the poor; the agricultural worker, and the teacher; the truck driver and the health worker; the civil servant and the soldier; the society as well as the citizen.
It destabilizes entire countries. It is a humanitarian disaster, a national security threat as well as a public health emergency.
It cuts across all boundaries and all borders. No matter the skin color, no matter the gender, and no matter the religion -- HIV does not discriminate and does not care.
But perhaps the most tragic of all of the virus' victims are those in our society who are the most innocent, the most helpless: our children.
For Africa and for the world, AIDS is truly a weapon of mass destruction.
But there are enough people in the world out there painting a doomsday scenario. What I want to talk about is how we will overcome this disease, and why Africa will lead the way.
Because I think the story that is not being told often enough here in the United States or around the world is the story of everyday Africans dealing with HIV/AIDS.
It is a story of people who work to overcome the hardships created and exacerbated by this dreaded disease and, in spite of these trials, refuse to lose their optimism. It is a story about those who do not let AIDS dim their hopes for a better future, a better life, for them and their children.
I'm talking about people like Beatrice Chola, the director of the Bwafwano Home-based Care Organization, whom I met when I traveled to Zambia last year. Working as a nurse in the Chipata health center of Lusaka, Beatrice started Bwafwano back in 1996 when she saw that the health center was overrun with HIV/AIDS and TB-infected patients.
he recognized the strain that the Chipata health center was under, and she saw that the needs of these HIV and TB infected patients were not being met. So she joined with several other community members to found the Bwafwano Home-based Care Organization, which literally means "helping one another."
Today, thanks to her leadership, Bwafwano has mushroomed into a comprehensive community care organization, offering medical services; voluntary testing and counseling for HIV; schooling; home-based care; and poverty reduction and income generation programs.
Since its inception, Bwafwano has trained over 300 community health workers and is currently providing home-based care to over 1300 HIV/AIDS patients and directly observed treatment to more than 180 TB infected patients. In addition, the organization is caring for over 1,100 orphans and vulnerable children.
When I was there in August of last year, Beatrice was struggling to find a way to provide school uniforms to the children she was caring for, so that they could attend school just like any other child in the community. Thankfully, she recently received a donation of about 300 school uniforms, but she still needs more help.
Beatrice and the good people at Bwafwano are not alone. There are hundreds of Beatrices throughout Africa, and I've met many of them during my trips to the Continent. These are courageous, caring, determined people who see an unmet need in their community and then mobilize to fill it.
These are the people on the frontlines. These are the people who will teach us and lead us in the battle against HIV/AIDS. And they are the ones who give me hope. They are the ones that give me strength and courage. They are the ones who inspire me to come back here to Washington, D.C. to fight for Africa and the African people - to build stronger ties between the United States and the Continent. Because they are the ones who need resources! And together we should be working to provide those resources.
When I was in the California State Assembly, educating state and local officials on the importance of Africa and its social and economic benefits was one of my missions. I went to Speaker Willie Brown - he was speaker then, and just recently finished his term as Mayor of San Francisco, but I went to him and convinced him to create a special Select Committee on California-Africa Affairs, which I then chaired, in order to explore ways to strengthen the ties between California and the African people.
After that I began working with Secretary Ron Brown, the greatest secretary ever, to establish a California Trade Office in Africa to build better connections between African and Californian businesses, so that we could stimulate trade and investment. And Ron Brown helped me get that bill through the legislature and we setup a trade office in Africa.
But by far my most strenuous efforts over the last six years since I've been in Congress have been to make my colleagues and the American public more aware about the global pandemic of HIV/AIDS.
Tonight I would like to put the United States slow, but decent first steps in addressing this pandemic in a historical context beginning in 1998 when I was elected to Congress. This work really began with my friend and mentor, a great statesman, Congressman Ron Dellums. Ron came to me in 1999 with a group of African scientists and activists with an idea to create an AIDS Marshall Plan for Africa.
Modeled on the Marshall Aid plan for Europe following World War II, we wanted to provide a massive infusion of funds to Africa to fight the emerging pandemic. I'm not sure where we'd be if it weren't for Ron Dellums and his consistent, passionate and diligent insistence that our government wake up, get its head out of the sand and exercise some moral leadership in addressing a disease that some say is worse than the bubonic plague.
With the help of my colleague Congressman Jim Leach of Iowa and the Congressional Black Caucus, we turned this idea into the World Bank AIDS Trust Fund, the framework for what today you know as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Knowing of my interest in Africa and the AIDS pandemic, President Clinton invited me to join Sandy Thurman, then Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy at the White House, on a Presidential Mission to Africa in March of 1999.
Again I was inspired by the dynamic optimism of Africans who struggled and endured against all odds. And I came back to Congress even more determined to fight for Africa, and to rally the CBC around the important issue of HIV/AIDS.
Because if were to succeed here in the United States in passing AIDS legislation to help Africa, then Africa's problem needed to become our problem. We needed to work collectively with Africans to lobby both our colleagues in Congress, and the administration to do what was right.
But it was the summer of 2000 that I think really was the watershed moment for US policy in regards to the AIDS pandemic in Africa. During that summer, The World Bank AIDS Trust Fund was gaining momentum. We passed the bill out of the Financial Services Committee, which I also sat on, because the International Relations Committee would not have a hearing on the bill, and then we passed the bill unanimously in the House in May.
And I am proud to say that history will record that each and every member of the Congressional Black Caucus co-sponsored this legislation, something almost unheard of. And during that summer we were lobbying and urging our Senate colleagues to move quickly on the bill.
That summer, I traveled to Durban, South Africa to attend the 13th International AIDS Conference. I was the only Member of Congress to attend, and I remember I had to miss votes in order to be there.
And let me tell you, I hate missing votes. Because I believe that when you are elected to represent the people, it's your vote in Congress that gives them a voice.
But I had to go to South Africa. Because this International AIDS Conference was important. For the first time it was being held on the continent of Africa and in a developing country that was experiencing a pronounced HIV/AIDS epidemic.
I remember the theme that year was "Break the Silence." And looking back on that conference and what was accomplished afterwards, I think that's just what we did.
The conference in Durban finally put a human face on the devastation that was going on in Africa. It brought the people of Africa together to face this pandemic, and it finally got the international community to wake up and realize that the devastation AIDS had caused and would cause in Africa was real.
For me, it served as the clarion call to action.
I literally spent 24 hours at the conference and upon returning found that the AIDS foreign assistance budget for Africa had been cut by $42 million that week. This cut represented about 1/3 of the already under-funded budget.
Inspired by my recent trip to South Africa, and working together with my colleagues Congresswoman Nita Lowey and Nancy Pelosi, we fought back.
We organized wave after wave of House Members to come down to the floor and speak on behalf of AIDS in Africa. And as the vote neared, I furiously lobbied my colleagues to vote for my amendment.
We bucked the tide, fought against the odds and the powers that be, and you know what? We passed the amendment that night, and we restored that $42 million in funding.
Two weeks later, the Congress passed The Global AIDS and Tuberculosis Relief Act of 2000, which contained the World Bank AIDS Trust Fund legislation. And not long afterwards, President Clinton signed it into law.
Let me tell you, I saw a glimmer of hope. The Trust Fund was a good start, but I was ready to do more. And Africans were telling us that they need more urgent help, in particular, they needed immediate access to anti-retroviral drugs.
At the time, virtually no international donors were providing these lifesaving drugs, and that included the United States. But drug prices were starting to fall and wide-scale treatment was rapidly becoming a real possibility in Africa.
So in 2001, working collectively with AIDS activists here in the United States, Africans on the ground, and my colleagues on the International Relations Committee, we sat down and drew up H.R. 2069, the Global Access to HIV/AIDS Prevention, Awareness, Education and Treatment Act of 2001.
At its heart, this legislation sought to target our AIDS foreign assistance efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa toward women and youth, whom statistics showed were most vulnerable to infection.
But most importantly we also provided for USAID to purchase and distribute anti-retroviral drug therapy in Africa.
Of course, the Bush Administration did not immediately welcome this new initiative. In fact, if you remember, the USAID Administrator made some morally repugnant comments to the effect that anti-retroviral therapy would never work in Africa, because Africans could not or would not adhere to the strict drug regimen in part because they could not tell time.
Of course I called for his resignation. But they didn't fire him, and he's still working over there.
Well, I'm glad to say that the data clearly proved him to be wrong. In fact, we know today that not only does ARV therapy work well in Africa when given a chance, but it works even better than it does here in the United States.
So eventually we won over those who opposed the bill, and we passed it out of committee and passed it out of the House of Representatives in December of 2001.
The following year, I traveled to Barcelona, Spain to attend the 14th International AIDS conference and to reconnect with old acquaintances who I had met in South Africa and to continue our collective struggle.
Once again the conference was a success. And what began as a movement to "Break the Silence" in Durban became "Knowledge and Commitment for Action" in Barcelona.
And there was the difference. Africa's struggle had become everyone's struggle. And now, we were no longer talking about how devastating AIDS had become. We were talking about what we could do to defeat it.
When I came back to Congress in the summer of 2002, the Senate had just passed their version of HR. 2069, and it seemed that we were well on the way in helping to make treatment a reality in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Well, we came achingly close to a final bill that year. But eventually our negotiations faltered, and as a result, we would have to wait until 2003 to pass a comprehensive global AIDS bill.
In December 2002 the Congressional Black Caucus sent a letter to President Bush urging him to set up a presidential initiative on AIDS in Africa. We had nearly every member of the Black Caucus, and practically every activist group here in the US sent him a similar letter.
In January of 2003, the President Bush finally took up our cause, pressured by the growing sense of urgency that we had been building for many years. His promise of $15 billion during his State of the Union Address provided us with renewed momentum, and within four months we passed the landmark bill, H.R. 1298, The United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act of 2003.
As the lead Democratic sponsor of this legislation, along with my colleague and distinguished Ranking Member on the International Relations Committee, Tom Lantos, I was proud of the legislation we had helped to negotiate with Chairman Henry Hyde and the Republicans.
For sure, it did not include everything that we wanted. But it did take a very big step in the direction of finally providing treatment for many of those in Africa and the developing world that desperately needed it.
Our only problem was making sure that the President followed through on his promise of funding the initiative at $3 billion a year. Of course, given the President's track record, we knew that this would be a difficult battle.
Every chance he took, the President publicly lauded the AIDS initiative and the promise of more funding. When he went on his whirlwind mission to Africa last year, barely stopping in any one country, much less taking the time to soak in each country's culture and people, he promised that help was on the way.
But what he wasn't telling you while he was over there was that his advisors were up here in Washington telling us that Africa could not absorb the money. They were telling us that Africa did not have the proper infrastructure or capacity to use the money he was promising.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
These are the same people who were telling us two years ago that treatment could never work in Africa. I don't have to tell you what I think about such comments. And I don't have to tell you what it means to the poor child who has been orphaned by AIDS, who lives day-to-day with the hope that help is on the way.
Thankfully, many of my colleagues in Congress were not swayed by the President's delay tactics. But still, we were only able to squeeze out $2.4 billion of the $3 billion that we had promised. Unfortunately that's nowhere near enough to what we need -- to what Africa needs to defeat this pandemic.
That's why I believe very strongly that we cannot just rely on the United States to provide this funding because clearly the priorities of this Administration are elsewhere. We must continue to encourage the international community to take a stronger role, particularly through the Global Fund.
As you know, the Global Fund has approved $2.1 billion over two years to 227 programs in 122 countries and 3 territories. It is a powerful tool that globally is helping to unite government, civil society, and non-governmental organizations together to provide a coordinated response to the AIDS pandemic. In many ways it is the embodiment of our collective struggle, and it deserves our continued support.
But, most importantly, I believe very strongly that we must free up Africa's own resources in this global fight. We must provide accelerated debt relief measures now and move towards full debt cancellation immediately, so that African countries can put their own resources to use.
Again, the United States remains the biggest obstacle to achieving this. Despite language that I fought for in last year's global AIDS legislation urging the administration to seek expanded debt relief, particularly for countries heavily affected by AIDS, they have not moved an inch.
And frankly, I believe that is wrong. The fact is we can never expect or hope that Africa can deal with HIV/AIDS with our funding alone. Because even though AIDS is a global problem, in Africa, we must support African-led and African-generated initiatives. And the best way we can do that is to force the World Bank and IMF to untie the hands of African governments.
Let me assure you that the Congressional Black Caucus, along with many of colleagues in Congress believe that debt cancellation is an integral part of our collective struggle against global HIV/AIDS, and we will continue to fight for it.
But apart from this issue of funding, which is a battle that we will again fight this year, we must also work to provide comprehensive care for the millions of children who are being orphaned by the AIDS pandemic.
Hearing the call from activists and Africans, recently I put together legislation that would seek to focus and better coordinate US foreign assistance measures to address the ever-growing problem of orphans and vulnerable children in Africa and the developing world.
The bill, H.R. 4061, passed the International Relations committee by I am please to say, a unanimous vote, and I look forward to its swift passage in the full House. I also just want to point out my staff Christos Tsentas, who worked on this bill and who can provide you with more information on it.
But while my bill is a step in the right direction to providing for the needs of orphans and vulnerable children, we cannot do it alone. What we need again is the dynamic leadership of Africa, and Africans.
The leadership of individuals like Beatrice who I mentioned earlier, shows us how it can be done. Because for me, it's the experience of Africans that inspires me and gives me hope for future.
And I know that each of you here know inspiring stories of Africans overcoming the odds; of Africans bonding together as a community to care for each other; of Africans still dreaming and hoping of something better in life despite AIDS, TB, and malaria; despite poverty; despite famine.
Yes, Africa, indeed, is hope. And today it serves as the focus of our hopes on how AIDS can be stopped; on how an epidemic can be reversed; and how treatment and quality health care can be accessed by everyone. And how in the process infrastructure can be built, clinics and housing can be developed, jobs can be created, and out of this tragedy we can build a better life for everyone.
These may seem like difficult goals, but I know that together we can reach them. But it takes each and every single one of us, because AIDS is a global problem, and we are all in this struggle together.
I want you take a moment, and think about how AIDS has affected you. And I want you to take a moment and think about those whose lives have been cut tragically short by this devastating epidemic.
Think about the 25 million people who have died of AIDS; men and women, husbands and wives, sons and daughters. Think of the victims of a disease that reserves no clemency for any class, gender, denomination, race, sexual orientation or nationality. Because they deserve our thoughts and our prayers.
And their loved ones deserve a world without AIDS.
Together we can make that a reality.
Thank you. Thank you, Ambassador
