If the United States were to ratify just two UN Conventions--on the Rights of the Child and the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women--and back them with the full power of its diplomacy and financial resources, less powerful countries would have to do the same. I know that this is not easy to do. But UNICEF, when it proposed the Convention on the Rights of the Child more than 10 years ago, said that some governments would have to change their constitutions to be in compliance with it. What is more important, to leave unchanged a document conceived in another age, or to feed, educate and save millions of lives, eradicate poverty and put in place real sustainable development based on true global public health? Take AIDS as an example. The war on terrorism has distracted governments from the war on AIDS and the poverty that it causes.

The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called for a fund of $10 billion, of which only $2 billion has been raised. Many diseases kill millions, but AIDS spread by the sexually active eliminates the engines of societies--parents, teachers, doctors, government leaders--causing them to collapse. And the effect on the young? Former President Clinton said that the projected 100 million cases by 2010 would be enough "to spread violence among young people who fear that they only have a year or so to live and therefore can't understand why they shouldn't be involved in whatever conflict is handy." These young people are the 100 million AIDS orphans by 2010 projected by my organization, not the 'official' estimates of 40 million.

The AIDS devastation that afflicted Africa after an invisible and silent spread of 10 years is surfacing in China, Russia, India and Eastern Europe. If we don't pay attention to it and all global health issues, it will cost much more later and create more innocent victims and their orphans. This planet is our village or megacity, if you prefer. We are one global extended family, and we need to help each other as good neighbors do. This requires a change of mentality, a new set of ethics for the new economy and order of this new millennium. What better way to begin than by justice, not just charity which does not attack the root causes of poverty and disease, and by ratifying and implementing international conventions that make health, education, and equality rights for all and not luxuries for the few. Our goal and motto should be the definition of health and the right to health in the preamble to the 1946 WHO Constitution signed by 61 states. "Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity... The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition."