Almost 34 million people live with HIV worldwide and more than 7,000 new infections occur every day. About 64% of people eligible for Anti-Retro-Viral (ARV) treatment – meaning that they are already in a severe stage of AIDS - in low and middle-income countries continue to have no access to life saving treatment. Young people (aged 15-24) account for 42% of the new HIV infections among adults.

Trade unions around the world will be using today as a focus to promote action on HIV and AIDS in the workplace and to call for renewed international commitment to tackle the pandemic, on the basis of shared ownership of the AIDS response.

A major source of concern is that the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM) which underwrites AIDS treatment for about half its recipients in developing countries announced on 23 November that it will make no new grants for the next two years because of the worldwide economic downturn.

The ITUC also remains concerned that we will not achieve a prevention revolution or universal access without promoting an integrated health and development agenda. Accordingly, I welcomed the recommendations of the new report “Social Protection Floor for a Fair and Inclusive Globalization” presented in October to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon by former President of Chile and UN Women Executive Director Michelle Bachelet, and ILO Director General Juan Somavia.

The report underlines the urgency of building a global social protection floor for all women and men who have no such protection, highlighting the fact that 75% of the world’s population are not covered by adequate social security, 1.4 billion people live on less than US$1.25 a day, 150 million people suffer financial catastrophe annually and 100 million people have been pushed below the poverty line due to needing to pay for health care. The ITUC is convinced that if governments have the political will and work in close coordination with the social partners, social protection can be made universal including in the poorest countries. The response to AIDS must be set within the broader development agenda and integrated with other human rights, development and health efforts.

Using workplaces – as venues for “combination prevention”, non-discrimination campaigns and treatment adherence – is the best way to optimize limited resources and work towards universal access. Accordingly, addressing protection of workplace related human rights of people living with or perceived to be living with HIV can lead to important public health, socio-economic and individual benefits. So the ITUC will continue to play a decisive role by strengthening its leadership in the response to HIV and AIDS and by better aligning trade union activities and advocacy to the changing context of HIV at the global, regional and national levels. The challenge now is to keep AIDS high on the agenda and to accelerate action to end the epidemic.  The ITUC stays committed to the scaling up of the response of the global community and to achieving universal access.

Unions will highlight this year’s WAD theme, “Getting to Zero”, to build awareness about the need to achieve:

• zero employment related discrimination on grounds of real or perceived HIV status;
• zero new infections -  through addressing socio-economic determinants of vulnerability to HIV infection, including those directly related to the world of work; and
• zero AIDS related deaths – through addressing social injustice in access to treatment and through extending social protection, as a means to support individual and collective human development and productivity.

This is not the time to weaken efforts to address HIV and AIDS. By continuing our work to reduce inequities, secure commitment of world leaders, and close existing gaps the trade union movement is determined to significantly reduce new infections, AIDS–related stigma and discrimination, and deaths.

25 Nov: UN Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women

Sexual and gender-based violence in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is a human tragedy which must be denounced and brought to an end.

There is no excuse for the cruelty of those who torture and rape women and girls on a regular basis. There is no excuse either for the government of the DRC which systematically fails to enforce its laws and maintains a situation of impunity in which perpetrators are never prosecuted.

But the conflict in the DRC, and the gender-based violence that characterizes it, is sustained and fuelled by financial gains and profits.

The region is rich of minerals including gold and the infamous 3 T (tin, tantalum, and tungsten) used to make mobile phones, computers, DVD players or video game systems among others. The electronics industry is the largest consumer of minerals from Eastern Congo and it injects considerable amount of money into the supply chain out of which the different armed groups prosper. They are the main perpetrators of massive rapes and related crimes.

To mark UN Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the ITUC has published a special report into the situation in the region. We’ve found that most mine workers in Eastern Congo are informal small scale miners, with no right and no voice. They work 10 hours a day for less than a dollar. The minerals they extract will pass in the hands of various traders before being shipped off probably to East Asia where they are refined into metal to be used by electronics companies.

There have been several national and international initiatives taken recently, aimed at regulating the trading of minerals from the DRC. Multinational companies have been requested to take up their responsibilities too and voluntary guidelines have been adopted. But convincing results are not yet on the table and mine workers continue to live and work in inhumane conditions. The lives of thousands of women and girls continue to be destroyed and the prospects for the babies born of rapes, with a high incidence of HIV/AIDS, are grim.

So the question is: who can take responsibility for what happens in the supply chain? While pointing at the Congolese government, the armed groups, local and multinational companies might appear to be easy, the truth is that nothing seems able to put an end to this bloody business.

In fact, our over-consumption of electronics drives the demand for minerals. In rich countries the life cycle of a cell phone is 18 months. Only 15 to 20% of electronic products are recycled. The reality is that our hi-tech-based life has become dependent on a freely flowing supply of 3 T. Does that explain the inaction of several governments? Does that explain the voluntary non-binding nature of international initiatives?  Aren’t we, as consumers, silently complicit?

Our study aims at shedding some light on the supply chain of one of the most successful industries of our modern world, and its terrible impact on many thousands of women and girls every year. We hope that after reading it, you will look at your computer and cell phone in a different way!

World leaders here in Copenhagen can today make history and give our children and grandchildren a fighting chance at a stable future. Working people around the world and their families are watching. They are depending on you to commit to a  binding agreement that delivers a habitable planet, decent work and financial support for the most vulnerable; an historic legacy, right here, today in Copenhagen.

Trade unions support the highest ambitions for binding targets in developed countries and ambitious actions in developing nations that must limit the temperature rise to 2° or less. We urge nations to accept transparency, to ensure trust through a global treaty finalized in the first half of 2010. Wealthy nations must lay the foundations for that trust with the finance and technology to kick start low carbon development, the investment to ensure climate resilience, employment and decent work.

Those investments will transform our economies and create millions of new jobs as we rebuild after the devastation of the global financial crisis. We must all take responsibility in this global challenge.

Delegates, we would like to express our satisfaction that this process has recognised the importance of calling for a Just Transition as a driver for decent work and good quality job creation. We thank those Parties that understood the potential of this paragraph for building a broad support for climate action.

The International Trade Union Confederation and its members are expecting and indeed relying on our presidents and prime ministers to put aside their differences, to stand as leaders and go the extra distance to do their fair share. Failure is not an option for our future so it cannot be an option for you. History will judge you on what you do today but more immediately so will we.

Solidarity.