Remarks by President McAleese at the Unveiling of the `Rose Statue’ – World AIDS Day
Remarks by President McAleese at the Unveiling of the `Rose Statue’ – World AIDS Day St Stephen’s Green, Dublin Friday, 1st Dec
Tá an-áthas orm bheith anseo libh inniu agus muid ag céiliúradh an ócáid mhór seo. Ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl daoibh as an chuireadh agus as fáilte a bhí caoin, cneasta agus croíúil.
Good morning everybody.
As you came here today, many of you will have passed the statue of Wolfe Tone at the Merrion Row corner of the Green. Inside the Green at that same corner, there is a memorial to the victims of the Famine which devastated this land a century and a half ago. The calamitous effects of that famine in terms of lost lives and wasted lives continued to reverberate for generations. It skewed history’s big picture the same way it skewed the lives of its victims. Its legacy was loss - appalling, avoidable, scandalous loss - and a long memory that keeps Ireland wise to equally cataclysmic events and wise to the role played by state neglect, poverty, ignorance and voicelessness.
That is why we gather today, on World AIDS Day, to remember the lost victims and the potential victims of that scourge of our modern age. Over twenty-five million have died since AIDS was first discovered and, while its tentacles have reached virtually every corner of the globe, its most devastating effects are being felt in Africa. Decades of progress on that struggling continent are now being obliterated.
Life expectancy which should have been rising is plummeting. Twelve million children have been orphaned. An employer in Lesotho told me a few months ago that he would need to recruit three people for every job because staff turnover through death from AIDS is so high in that sad little country where one in four is infected with the HIV virus - and total wipe-out is a real possibility. In Kenya we were told that seventeen teachers a day are dying from AIDS. The stresses and strains on family life, on healthcare, on schools, on the workplace are on a scale that is almost beyond our understanding.
A disturbing factor is that rates of HIV infection are increasing for women. Women – especially young women and girls – are particularly vulnerable because of denial and neglect of their rights, endemic gender inequality, ignorance of sexual realities and pervasive violence. A great part of the challenge we face is educating women and young girls to protect themselves and to access the care and support that they need.
After a slow start in tackling HIV/AIDS the situation today is beginning to show progress, with some countries showing a significant decline in rates of infection. The Irish Government is funding the first national roll-out of an anti-retroviral drugs strategy in any African country, in Lesotho with the help of the Clinton Foundation. The hope is that it will buy Lesotho the time it needs to confront AIDS on all the fronts where it needs to be addressed. Given the sheer scale of Africa’s AIDS problem, we know that it will be a long time before this pandemic is brought under firm control, but it is vital that those working and living with HIV/AIDS are credited with the changes they are making and that their successes, big and small, are acknowledged as beacons of hope.
Stalin once cynically said that “one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic”. We know what he was getting at for Ireland was once such a statistic, which is precisely why our famine monuments are of individuals, of men and women and children whose sufferings we refuse to overlook or sweep neatly into a clinical set of numbers.
AIDS is exacting a toll of suffering and courage on millions of individuals, among them Rose Atieno, a young Kenyan mother, who died in a rat‑infested hut, cared for by her eight-year-old son Curtis. He now cares for his father and three-year old sister, both of whom are HIV positive. Rose’s heroism so deeply moved Mary Donohoe, the Irish woman who nursed her through a hard dying, that her name inspired the Rose Project which is delivering medical care to poor communities in six countries in Africa. It is also sending a strong message that the people of Ireland care and that their care is not just idle words but translates into the hard graft it is going to take to overcome this vicious disease and its consequences.
To commemorate the life of Rose Atieno, `The Rose Bowl’ sculpted by Sandra Bell will stand here challenging all who see it to keep on remembering the suffering inflicted by HIV/AIDS and to take responsibility for ending it, both at home and abroad. I am proud to unveil this work which confers meaning, dignity and purpose on a life, and a death, too easily otherwise forgotten among AIDS’ vast roll-call of victims. I hope that the challenge of this monument, for that is what it is, will be heeded.
Gúim gach rath agus séan oraibh san am atá le teacht.