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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, December 01, 2001

UNHCR Observes World AIDS Day With Worldwide Program

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is marking AIDS Day which falls on December 1 with a series of events both at the agency's headquarters in Geneva and in many of its 289 offices across the world, UNHCR press officer Peter Kessler announced at a press briefing on Friday.


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United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is marking AIDS Day which falls on December 1 with a series of events both at the agency's headquarters in Geneva and in many of its 289 offices across the world, UNHCR press officer Peter Kessler announced at a press briefing on Friday.

He said the program includes an information campaign aimed at making UNHCR a more "AIDS-friendly" organization for both the refugees and its own staff in keeping with the U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's call to support those who have contacted the HIV virus.

As AIDS continues to spread around the world, vulnerable populations, including refugees, become increasingly affected. In Africa, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS among the refugee and local host populations oscillates between 7 percent to 25 percent, according to UNHCR.

Young people between the ages of 12 and 24 represent 35 percent of the world's refugees. Kessler said that a study commissioned by UNHCR in 1999 in refugee camp in Tanzania raised concerns over alarming practices: multiple partners, unprotected sex, and the exchange of sex for gifts from older males.

The UNHCR official said that UNHCR has been involved for over 10 years in producing guidelines for field activities an materials to encourage prevention and help in the camps and during emergency situation.

Kessler said that in addition to its programs in dozens of countries, UNHCR benefits from funds under the United Nations Foundation donated by Ted Turner amounting to 2.2 million U.S. dollars, covering 15 projects in 14 countries.

The projects include an educational theater production about AIDS that performed in 50 refugee schools in South Africa. In western Tanzania, more than 50,000 primary students and 4,000 high school students have been educated on HIV/AIDS in refugee camps through lectures, poems and cultural group performances.




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