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Pugwash Workshop on Threats Without Enemies:
The Security Aspects of HIV/AIDS
 29 April to 1 May 2005
Hosted by the South African Pugwash Group at Villa Via,
Gordon's Bay, South Africa
Report | Participants | Agenda

Provisional Schedule and Agenda

  • The purpose of the third workshop will be to accelerate the process of transmitting lessons learned from handling of the Southern African episodes to the next wave regions - China, India, Russia and the former Soviet Union
  • As a result of the holding of the first two workshops, and the spin-off consequences of them which have arisen, Pugwash is now in a position to shape and contribute a timely intervention in this leading-edge field of global security which may be of equivalent importance to its 1960 contribution to accelerating the Nuclear Test Ban in the era of the Cold War.

In a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in December 2004, Peter Piot, director of UNAIDS, emphasised the cruel dynamics of AIDS episodes. He explained how the exponential curve seen in the South Africa episode, for example, can also come to the next wave countries, especially India and the former Soviet republics, unless there is immediate and effective pre-emptive action.

Pugwash scientists have always been distinguished by their sensitivity to the need to think is a new way from conventional wisdom at any particular moment. The responsibility of international science is expressed in the commitment to use this power of ideas to force forward actions that might otherwise not present as swiftly.

There is an urgent need to transmit the lessons of success and of mismanagement in the southern African episode to the three regions which will host the next waves, and especially to India, where the aetiology of the pandemic will be similar to that found in Africa. The former Soviet republics are the other key area which would benefit from engagement in a briefing of SA lessons: in neither case has this yet occurred.

The third workshop will be held at a critical moment, and also at a moment of great opportunity to achieve a decisive "Pugwash effect". The international community is now beginning to digest the High Level Panel Report on Threats, Challenges and Power, published in December 2004. The Secretary General will make his views public early in the new year. Meanwhile UNAIDS has just launched the process which will lead to the submission of its report on AIDS and security to the Security Council on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of Resolution 1308 in July 2005. A number of Pugwashites (including the Chairman of Council, Professor Muller; Professor Prins, the principal academic animator of the workshop series; Professor Whiteside, one of the Commissioners on the UN Commission on AIDS and Governance in Africa) have been drawn into the UNAIDS process and UNAIDS will be convening in Copenhagen on 22/3rd February to conduct the key framing decisions for the 1308 report which must be completed by mid July. UNAIDS has contracted LSEAIDS to write the first drafts of the 1308 Report. Professor Prins is the lead author, assisted by Professors Barnett (Directing LSEAIDS) and Whiteside. In short, a natural pooling of effort has already occurred without conscious planning. It can be greatly enhanced by conscious planning and that is what is proposed for the third Pugwash workshop.

Session 1:

Introductions: Background to the workshop and rationale for the agenda - Professor Gwyn Prins

Status report and future prospects for the virus in Southern Africa
- Dr Lynne Webber
Session 2:

The arrival and vectoring of the virus in South Africa
- Professor Robert Shell

A History of the political management of the AIDS pandemic in South Africa - Dr Pieter Fourie
Session 3:

The battle over the AIDS statistics
- Dr Peter Doyle

Plenary discussion
Session 4: Responses and comparisons - India, Russia, Central Asia
Session 5:

Preparing the UNAIDS 1308 Report
- Professors Tony Barnett and Gwyn Prins, Dr Peter Piot.

Plenary Discussion