Stephen Lewis
UN special envoy contends response from governments has been inadequate
December 26, 2005
The Globe and Mail, by Anthony Reinhart
Vancouver — This week, we are introducing five people who have made a major contribution to Canadian society this year. Each runner-up will be profiled as a prelude to the announcement of our winner Saturday, Dec. 31. Go to globeandmail.com to see the profiles as they are published and to see some of the almost 1,000 submissions we received from our readers.
In the unlikely event that there was ever any doubt, it's no vacation being the United Nations special envoy on HIV-AIDS in Africa -- even, apparently, when you're on vacation.
"I'll probably spend about half my time working," Stephen Lewis says over the phone from Costa Rica, where his family takes an annual winter holiday. "But that's okay -- it's working in a very relaxed environment. There are fans spinning, and there's a pool not far away."
For a man who has spent the better part of five years peering into the dimmest corners of Africa's AIDS epidemic, Mr. Lewis, 68, maintains a remarkable capability for seeing the bright side.
That wasn't quite as apparent earlier in the year, as Mr. Lewis delivered five stinging Massey Lectures across Canada, chronicling the inadequacies of the developed world's response to Africa's plight. The speeches, unsparing in their criticism of political leaders, international lenders and the envoy's own employer, were released in a best-selling book, Race Against Time.
The media response to Mr. Lewis's outpouring of frustration left him apprehensive that he might be fired from what he has called the toughest job yet in a lifetime of tough jobs, including Ontario NDP leader, Canada's UN ambassador and, most recently, deputy executive director of Unicef.
Yet he says he heard nary a peep of negative feedback at the UN, which recently extended his posting, "in a very friendly way," through the end of 2006. "So all of the conjecture about whether or not Stephen had been too tough, or overstated things, or is on the ropes . . . it's all just been resolved," he says.
This coincides with the feedback Mr. Lewis has received from Canadian audiences since he took on the AIDS posting in 2001, and, soon afterward, set up the Stephen Lewis Foundation to raise money for on-the-ground projects in Africa.
While he feels "a little awkward and uncomfortable" about his nomination as The Globe's Nation Builder for 2005, it is this grassroots consciousness-raising and its resulting response that's helped put Mr. Lewis in contention.
"Meeting after meeting, they ask me, 'What do we do? How do we get involved?' " he says of the countless engagements -- from cavernous lecture halls to the smallest of elementary schools -- that he squeezed into his domestic speaking schedule this year. (Mr. Lewis estimates he spent one-quarter to one-third of the year in Canada.)
"And, in the aftermath of a meeting, they come up, one by one, and pledge their intention of going to Africa, of raising money, of joining an NGO [non-governmental organization]," he says. "Canadians are just being absolutely remarkable about it -- I can't get over it."
The Massey Lectures, which typically draw an over-40 crowd, attracted many younger attendees, while Mr. Lewis's book, released this fall, climbed quickly to the top of The Globe's bestseller list.
"I get the sense . . . that people are strongly united across Canada in wanting to do something about the pandemic, and wanting to help Africa," he says. "That's a very deep and intense and real feeling, and I carry it with me."
He carries it to rural villages and urban hospitals in Africa, where, as he writes in the opening line of his book, "I have spent the last four years watching people die."
Most jarring, of course, is that no one has to die this way in the developed world, where drugs have transformed AIDS from prolific killer to relatively manageable chronic condition. But 2005 was the deadliest year on record for the disease, because these drugs still aren't available to most of the 26 million Africans infected, out of 40 million AIDS patients worldwide.
"I've always felt that social injustice is morally wrong and you should try to correct it," Mr. Lewis says, "but I've never encountered a situation where millions of people are dying needlessly and the world seems to tolerate it. And that has touched me to my quick more strongly than anything else in my adult life."
While he admits it was risky to be so blunt in his assessments, he sees reward in the UN's decision to extend his tenure for another year, and in the outpouring of support he received at home -- evidence of which he packed, along with the sunscreen and swim trunks, for his hard-earned vacation.
"I have these 30 or 35 heart-wrenching letters from kids," Mr. Lewis says, describing a packet he received from an elementary school class that had heard about his exasperation at the inadequacy of the crisis response. "They said to me, 'Mr. Lewis, you mustn't give up because this is what is happening in Africa, and we want to keep struggling to overcome it, and we keep thinking of those kids in those countries.'
"To me, none of that is maudlin, and none of it is silly romanticism," he says. "There's just no question that these young people have learned to care about other parts of the world, and for me, there's nothing more important."