SECRETARY OF STATE KERRY MAKES REMARKS AT UNAIDS

FROM:  THE STATE DEPARTMENT 

Remarks at UNAIDS

Remarks

John Kerry

Secretary of State

UN Headquarters

New York City

September 25, 2014

Well, thank you very much. Thank you for a generous introduction. Mr. Deputy Secretary General, thank you for your leadership and thank you for your important words here today. And thank you to the many activists out here, those of you who are championing this effort on the frontlines. We certainly welcome Victoria Beckham. Thank you for taking this on.

And I want to note that my old friend and our leader, Eric Goosby, Dr. Eric Goosby, is here. Happy to see him and all his great work. And I’m happy to see – (applause). I’m happy to see a colleague of mine who I got to serve with for a few years before I came onto this, but delighted to see Senator from Delaware Chris Coons here, his passionate voice in the Senate for this – (applause). And all of you, thank you for – now I’m getting whispered who I have to start – my good friend Michel is saying got to recognize – (laughter) there, there. If I do that, I’m never going to get through this. (Laughter.)

Mr. Deputy Secretary General, three years ago you set a tremendous goal for all of us. You said, "Zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination, and zero AIDS." And that goal has been set for us to achieve by 2020. In the refusal to allow AIDS to ravage yet another generation, you have showed an even bigger determination than we might have anticipated to meet our global responsibilities. And I want to thank you for the tremendous efforts by setting that target for all of us. And I believe it’s achievable, notwithstanding the difficulties that Jan just mentioned to all of us.

I want to thank President Burkhalter of Switzerland and President Mahama of Ghana and President Zuma of South Africa, and my good old friend Michel Sidibe, the executive director of UNAIDS, for their commitment to helping to write a new chapter in the fight against AIDS.

It’s more than fair to say that the work that we’re doing together here is work that was once just a distant dream. And we are making an AIDS-free generation a closer reality for a lot of folks all around the world.

Now I think about what the word " AIDS" meant when I became a United States Senator in 1985. Back then it was a death sentence. Back then many people in positions of responsibility – and I knew them, some of them – were not even comfortable saying the word or talking about it in a meeting or being present when it was discussed.

I think about what the word " AIDS" meant on a global scale back in the 1990s, back when Senator Bill Frist and I first began working together on this issue and when we started to join three words together in a sentence: " AIDS in Africa." It meant a looming death sentence for an entire continent, and thank God people of conscience and conviction decided that was unacceptable.

The truth is that in many ways, we’ve ended 1985’s meaning of " AIDS" as we knew it. It’s not an unspoken word, nor is it an automatic death sentence. And thanks to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which grew out of our initial efforts in the Senate I am proud to say, we are on the road to do the same globally, notwithstanding pockets of greater emergence or pockets of resistance. But the reason we’re on the road is we know what we can achieve. We’ve seen what we’re able to do. We now have to complete the task to end the era of AIDS, period, full stop end the era. (Applause.)

Last year, I was honored to stand with President Obama as he announced that PEPFAR had not only met but exceeded his goal. That’s what I mean about we know we have the capacity: 6.7 million people are now receiving life-saving treatment, and that’s an astounding number, a fourfold increase since the beginning of this Administration, since Barack Obama came into office. And today, more than one million babies have been born HIV-free because of PEPFAR’s support. Now, these are a lot more than just numbers, and I think everybody in this room knows that better than any other people. Every one of these men, women, children has a unique contribution to make, and every one of those babies can now grow up to be a person, healthy, go to school, contribute to the workforce, realize dreams, and maybe even have sons and daughters of their own. Their lives remind us of what we have achieved, but more importantly, they remind us still of the miles we have yet to go in order to achieve the full-fledged AIDS-free generation.

So first, we need to continue to make strategic and creative investments that are based on the latest science and best practices. In a tight budget environment – and everybody faces that – every dollar, yen, and euro counts. And that’s why we need to focus on data, on mutual accountability, transparency for impact, and put our weight behind HIV prevention, treatment, and care interventions that work. We also need to continue to set benchmarks, and I’m very pleased that PEPFAR’s investment supports UNAIDS’s 90-90-90 targets. (Applause.) PEPFAR is laser-focused on achieving ambitious targets in the areas of high HIV prevalence, and the challenge is obviously big and it’s obviously important.

Second, we need to focus on the impact of HIV/AIDS on children, young women, and vulnerable populations. And that’s why the United States announced a new partnership last month between PEPFAR and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation called Accelerating Children’s HIV/AIDS Treatment. This ambitious partnership will help 300,000 more children living with HIV to get the treatment that they need, and I’m proud to announce today that we are making nearly 500 million in PEPFAR funds available this year to support efforts for children, young women, and vulnerable populations. (Applause.)

Third, we need to double down on our new country health partnerships, which are focused on using data to change people’s lives on the ground. South Africa, Rwanda, Namibia are on the front lines of the transformation from direct aid to providing support for locally run, self-sustaining investments, and we need to back these efforts every step of the way.

Finally, we need to ensure that the post-2015 development agenda reflects the United States’s continued commitment to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic and creating an AIDS-free generation. I want to emphasize: The United States commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS is undiminished, just as our work is unfinished. And our commitment has only been strengthened by the progress that we’ve made, the lives we’ve saved, and the fact that we’ve learned we know what to do, we just have to do it. That’s a story worth telling and it’s a story that compels all of us to continue.

So I will never forget just a few months ago walking into the Gandhi Memorial Hospital in Addis Ababa. And as I passed the front gate in the back with a group of doctors, nurses, and patients all assembled, I saw this big sign on the wall that read, " Ethiopia and the United States of America: Investing in a Healthy Future Together." That sign tells it all, and that sign is replicated all across communities in one place or another where this kind of help is coming to people. We know – we know that achieving an AIDS-free generation will continue to pose an incredible test. But we also know that with our work together, we can pass this test, we can see this fight across the finish line. And I’m convinced with the folks here and this commitment we are going to do just that. Let’s not stop. Let’s get the job done. Thank you. (Applause.)

SECRETARY KERRY'S REMARKS AT SYRIA MINISTERIAL

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT 

Remarks at Syria Ministerial

Remarks

John Kerry

Secretary of State

UN Headquarters

New York City

September 24, 2014

SECRETARY KERRY: Philip, thank you very much and thank you for chairing, and I appreciate enormously everybody’s indulgence. I’m sorry to be late. Because the foreign fighters forum is still going on, the President asked me to chair for some of the prime ministers and heads of state still there, and I need to go back in a moment, so I am very grateful for everybody’s indulgence with respect to that. As we all know, the diplomatic speed dating of this week is challenging, to say the least.

I want to thank all of our cohosts this afternoon, Foreign Ministers Fabius, Steinmeier, Cavusoglu, and, of course, our good friend Saud al-Faisal. This is a critical discussion, obviously, at a critical time, with the transformation that’s taking place with our action with respect to ISIL. And I am delighted to join the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia in bringing together so many friends of the Syrian people. I also want to thank our steadfast partners in these efforts, Hadi al-Bahra and the Syrian Opposition Coalition. We’re delighted to welcome you all here today.

Let me make it clear to all those who are part of that effort that for all of the men and women who make up the moderate Syrian opposition, we stand behind you today. We have stood behind you in these last years. I know sometimes there’s been a greater desire for more, but we will continue to stand beside you as long as ISIL remains a threat and Assad remains in power.

And now with the determination of the President to go to Congress and the successful vote by Congress, we stand in a very different position. We are overtly engaged in training and arming. It has taken a while to get there, but we are there, and that is significant, particularly at this moment that we are taking action against ISIL.

For three years, it is the moderate opposition who have been fighting for Syria’s future – first against a merciless dictator, and then also against another enemy as well, a terrorist group so extreme that even al-Qaida came to sever ties with it.

With the recent grotesque murder of French citizen Herve Gourdel, the world was once again reminded of the sheer evil of ISIL. It shocks the world’s collective conscience and it insults our collective sense of humanity. It is against everything that this institution in which we gather stands for. So we stand by the French people in outrage at this barbarity, and we also share their resolve to rid the Earth of this menace. We will not stand by as ISIL and others who use fear and violence and oppression to achieve their goals continue to find safe haven anywhere, including in Syria.

And that’s why this week President Obama ordered America’s armed forces to begin airstrikes against ISIL targets within Syria’s borders. And it’s why we were joined in this effort by many of our partners and friends in the region and around the table here today: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar. It’s also why we’re moving forward with our mission to do this training and equipping of the Syrian opposition. And that will deepen our investment in the only fighters who have been fighting ISIL, who drove ISIL out of Idlib province, who have been standing up to ISIL in Aleppo, standing up to ISIL in Damascus suburbs, standing up to ISIL in other parts of Syria.

So today I’m happy to announce an additional $40 million in immediate assistance for the opposition, and this includes more than 15 million for communications equipment, vehicles, food, other essential items for the armed opposition, as well as more than 25 million to support the civilian opposition as it works to build the capacity of governing.

As President Obama has made clear, the United States is committed to defeating and ultimately to destroying ISIL wherever it exists. And I’m very pleased to say that already more than 50 nations have committed to joining us in this effort in one role or another. Not every nation has to engage in military activities. We have to stop foreign fighters. We have to cut off funding. We have to engage in humanitarian effort. We have to train, equip, advise. There’s a role for everybody, but no nation should stand back from its engagement and its effort to try to help.

And we’re also committed to eliminating the ISIL threat because we know that for these last years, even as there was a period of time when there was some lack of cohesion and unity in the support that was being given from various places which detracted from the coalition’s efforts, we also know that during that time the moderate Syrian opposition had to fight ISIL. And as more people are engaged and as ISIL grows weaker because we do take them on, then the Syrian opposition will also grow stronger and this dynamic will shift.

Bashar al-Assad wants you to believe that the Syrian people have two options only: support his murderous regime or face a Syria ruled by extremist thugs from groups like ISIL or al-Nusrah. It’s one or the other, according to Assad. But everybody in this room knows better. We know that the most viable alternative to extremism in Syria is not the dictator that attracted these terrorists in the first place. Extremists will never stop fighting as long as he is in power. So the alternative to extremists is not Assad; it’s moderate opposition; it’s the moderate Syrians who have been fighting for freedom and dignity for far too long. And it’s the brave men and women who share our tolerance and respect for diversity, our commitment to the rule of law, and our vision of a stable, prosperous, and inclusive democracy in Syria. The moderate opposition remains Syria’s best hope, and they’re the only option for Syria’s future that we are prepared to accept.

No one has forgotten the fact that Assad had any number of opportunities to address the legitimate, peaceful grievances of his people. What started all of this in Syria was a follow-on to what started in Tunisia and what started in Egypt. It was young people who came out into the squares, into the streets, asking for jobs, for dignity, for a future. And they were met with violence. And when they were met with violence, their parents came out because they were shocked by what happened to their children. And then their parents were met with bullets and death. That was the beginning of this. People seem to forget that. This was not a religious-inspired event. This was an effort to have governance at its best.

So the regime chose to cling to power at all costs. The regime could have focused its military might on fighting terrorists as they began to gain influence, but it never chose to do that. It has been complicitous even with ISIL. They unleashed barrel bombs and chemical weapons on their own innocent civilians. And certainly the regime could have put the full force of law enforcement towards stopping foreign fighters from entering Syria and joining terrorist groups, but they never did that either. Instead, they were too busy imprisoning people and torturing peaceful activists.

The truth is there never has been a military solution to Syria’s civil war. The only way forward is and always has been and remains today a negotiated political solution ultimately. And despite more than three years of war and devastation in Syria, despite the exploitation of the crisis by ISIL and other extremists, and despite the immeasurable suffering that continues today, despite all of these horrible realities, as I look around and see the number of allies who have gathered here today, and as I think of the global coalition we have assembled of more than 50 countries committed to defeating ISIL, and as I consider the brave partners we have on the ground in Syria and in Iraq, I remain hopeful that a better future can be won.

So together, we can find a way forward as the Syrian people can choose their leadership, know peace, return to their homes, and hopefully, begin to lead lives with dignity and with a future. That’s our mission, and we are committed with our colleagues here at this dais and all of you in this room to seeing it through. Thank you, Philip.