I have just returned from a month in Burkina Faso, increasingly hit by
HIV/AIDS. There is indeed a problem, as Paul alludes. In Ouagadougou, the
central hospital has wards of AIDS victims and it is not uncommon to see
individuals in the final stages of aids related illness,shunned by the
community, begging on the streets (although they seemed to have been rounded
up and put out of sight for the African Film Festival 2 weeks ago).
1) A very severe problem is the potential withdrawal of US government
funding to condom distribution programmes under Bush. These longstanding
programmes (often supported with 'population control' motives, I must add)
have actually made a difference in this ex-socialist country for 15 years
(people really listen to media reports and messages). That's one up for
neo-liberalism. Health workers are now extremely worried about the
implications of reduced condom availability particularly in rural areas.
Other donors may emerge to replace USAID, of course, if they are forced to
withdraw. I attended a television event in Ouaga at which AIDS awareness
videos were being trialled in front of HIV infected womens groups, doctors
and media people, and talked to people at the SIDAII (AIDSII) project. I
also talked to young returnee migrants in northern villages. People seem
very concerned. Canadian funding is already being improved.
2) Other causes of increasing infection rates are however the mass
xenophobia sweeping Ivory Coast, where Burkinabes have sought work on a
seasonal basis and made their homes for over a century. These is now
political turmoil and an economic downturn in IC. Infection rates are higher
among the migrant workers of Abidjan and the coastal plantations - basically
because they leave their wives at home in Burkina and sex is readily
available.  But with up to 300 trucks a day crossing the border back into
Burkina bearing returning migrants forced out of Ivory Coast by violence or
property seizures, now is a critical time to make sure that people are aware
of at least basic protection measures as they are re-absorbed into towns and
villages. (incidentally, Abidjan was cited in Robert Kaplans dreadful
article in the Atlantic Monthly in 1994, 'the coming arnarchy' as a worst
case of ethnic violence and migrant poverty - he is partially proven correct
by recent events).
3) Also, prostitution has risen rapidly - shockingly so - in the urban areas
I know best - not only Ouaga's periurban shacks , but the bars and hotels of
the city centre in Ouaga and the 'boites' of small towns like Kongoussi are
good sites of business. Prostitutes travel from Ghana (moving from soft
currency to hard currency, into the CFA zone pegged to the french franc) but
there are Burkinabes and Ivoriens as well.

Are all of these issues pegged to the failure of the west to effect resource
transfers for health care and other institutions? The first might be - the
second and third only peripherally. Pursuing an argument that sees an
economic motivation behind exploitation and inequality - an an economic
solution to these problems -  can get at some of the reasons behind the AIDS
crisis, but it also can blind the researcher to sociocultural factors. The
crisis in IC has a deepseated ethnic base - only the trigger is a recent
economic downturn. And is prostitution only a result of financial need and
money in the pocket, and not of demand (which differs by ethnic group,
position in the social hierarchy, and location as well as wealth)?

Were a massive resource transfer to be initiated to Burkina, I know where it
would go - to the 55,000 functionaries and to their leaders, and to the
multi-national entrepreneurial class. Not to the rural and urban poor.

I passed Charles Taylor's villa every day in Ouaga - the Burkina regime
supported him and gave him asylum, despite the accusation of war crimes
against him in Liberia. Under the current regime with these credentials, the
chances of a large resource transfer being handled in an equitable fashion
by the state are slim.
And Burkina is a country that 'works' pretty well, and actually maintains
economic growth. Next door in Niger, everything is harder and poverty is far
worse.
What I am getting at is that
a) western neoliberal regimes have had unintended consequences in subSaharan
Africa - not all of them negative. Donor sponsored programmes work. It is
not a black and white issue where we can blame the Europeans and North
Americans.
b) local capacities to absorb resource transfers is limited. Just look at
World Bank project funding to prove that point. And we shouldn't trust those
in power to uphold basic rights.
c) explanatory chains usually lead to uncovering social, cultural, political
and economic factors behind events, that interpenetrate (That is why I did
not become  an economic geographer - just a geographer).

I would also point out that Burkina had a very ideologically driven
socialist revolution under Sankara in the mid 1980s. Most links with the
West were severed, and this provides a test case for an abrupt severing of
colonial ties to neoliberal western powers (even the Peace Corps were
banned) favoured by the hard left. Things did not get much better materially
in this period - even if the people gained enormous respect for, and from,
their errant Sankariste leader.

That it has taken this many words to make a simple point about the need to
avoid simplistic analysis, testifies to the multiple layers that the
simplistic attribution of blame fails to address. And I am not a specialist
in the AIDS problem in Burkina, so I must defer to others who can correct
me.

Simon

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Kesby
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: 3/8/01 9:25 PM
Subject: The Geo-ethics anti-democracy

Statement only. Absolutely not for discussion. Do not reply to this
message. . . . I have no interest in what you think anyway . . . .  :-)

(sorry no hypertext links to labyrinthine web sites - mine is rather
small actually - although it does have a picture of me on it - just in
case anyone thought I was some kind of international cartel conspiracy -
rather than a embodied subject located in time and space)

Re Paul's "The geo-ethics of the Holocaust"

I do not think I would go as far as to say that Paul was LYING about his
interest in the fate of the millions with HIV/AIDS in the developing
world, I just think it was unfortunate that he seemed to USE their
misery as just another opportunity to repeat his, by now well known,
theories about the failings of western liberal democracies.  How often
have privileged academics plundered the experience of the 'other' in
order to embellish their own Eurocentric intellectual preoccupations I
wonder.

What Paul says about the lack of resource distribution and the west's
disinterest in Africa's pandemic are true enough.  I just don't know how
much succour HIV positive Africans would take from his implied
conclusion 'wait till the downfall of democracy and you will be alright
mate'.  I don't remember women ever gaining much comfort from the slogan
'equal rights AFTER the revolution, for example.