Following is the text of the UNICEF fact sheet:

(begin fact sheet)

UNICEF

YOUNG PEOPLE AND HIV/AIDS

The Facts

The world's young people are threatened by HIV/AIDS. Of the 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS, more than a quarter are aged 15 to 24. Half of all new infections now occur in young people.

Young people are a vital factor in halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, and many of them are playing a significant role in the fight against it. But they, and children on the brink of adolescence, urgently need the skills, knowledge and services to protect themselves against becoming infected with HIV.

World leaders and other adults have done shamefully little to empower young people against HIV/AIDS. Thus, although the crisis is over two decades old, even basic knowledge regarding HIV/AIDS is disturbingly low. Nowhere is this truer than in developing countries, home to 85 per cent of the world's young people.

Half of all teenage girls in sub-Saharan Africa, where 70 per cent of young people with HIV/AIDS live, still do not know that healthy-looking people can have HIV. In Haiti, nearly two thirds of sexually active young women aged 15 to 19 do not believe they are at risk of infection. In Mozambique, 74 per cent of young women and 62 per cent of young men aged 15 to 19 cannot name a single method of protecting themselves against HIV/AIDS.

Young women are typically at even higher risk of infection than are young men. Recent data show that more than twice as many young women as young men are acquiring HIV in some developing countries - a pattern that is being repeated worldwide. Social, biological and economic factors make young women especially vulnerable, preventing them from learning about sexual health issues and gaining the self-confidence that is key to negotiating safe sex. Too often young women have little control over when or how sex takes place, or over exercising their right to refuse unwanted or unsafe sex.

In regions where HIV epidemics are at an early, concentrated stage, more young men than young women are infected. This is currently the situation in Latin America, where epidemics are concentrated among men who have sex with men, and in Central and Eastern Europe, where injecting drug use drives the epidemic. However, as these epidemics spread more widely, young women will become at higher risk of infection. In the Caribbean, young women already represent the majority of young people acquiring HIV.

At especially high risk of HIV infection are young refugees and migrants. So are young people involved in commercial sex, those in institutions, street children and young men having sex with men. Even more than other young people, these groups lack access to sexual health information and services. They are vulnerable to being coerced or enticed into sex for money, food or protection. Drug use is also widespread, including drugs that are injected, which, tragically, is very effective in spreading HIV.

Many adults have failed inexcusably to fulfill their responsibilities to educate young people about HIV/AIDS. Even worse, adults are frequently the very people coercing or forcing young men and women into unsafe or unwanted sex. Other adults have conspicuously failed to stop such abuses even when aware that they are being perpetrated in their communities.

The Response: Core principles and strategies

At the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS in June 2001, governments adopted a Declaration of Commitment outlining specific, time-bound goals and targets. With agreement that a focus on children and young people is central to the fight against HIV/AIDS, the Declaration commits governments and their partners to:

"By 2005, ensure that at least 90 per cent, and by 2010 at least 95 per cent of young men and women aged 15 to 24 have access to the information, education, including peer education and youth-specific HIV education, and services necessary to develop the life skills required to reduce their vulnerability to HIV infection; in full partnership with youth, parents, families, educators and health care providers."

Governments also agreed that they would:

"Reduce by 2005 HIV prevalence among young men and women aged 15 to 24 in the most affected countries by 25 per cent and by 25 per cent globally by 2010."

Achieving these goals requires:

--Establishing time-bound targets by 2003;

--Mobilizing effective leadership;

--Intensifying efforts to challenge gender stereotypes and attitudes, and gender inequalities in relation to HIV/AIDS;

--Encouraging the active involvement of men and boys in HIV/AIDS prevention efforts; and

--Strengthening commitment to working with and for young people.

In addition, young people need to have the skills and knowledge to protect themselves from an early age. The imparting of such information should be in the context of children's and young people's general development. With concerted action, the world can now fulfill its duty to ensure that children enter adolescence equipped to make the choices that will allow them to live free of HIV. It is critical that these efforts be initiated in the vital years before adolescents become sexually active.

UNICEF's Response

UNICEF's work is guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the world's most widely embraced human rights treaty. Winning against HIV/AIDS is a top priority for UNICEF because this disease is depriving millions of children of their rights to survive, to develop, to be protected and to have a say in decisions that affect them.

No single organization can defeat HIV/AIDS. Partnerships at all levels are therefore key to UNICEF's response. UNICEF is working closely with national governments, people living with HIV/AIDS, NGOs, civil society and faith-based organizations, in addition to UNAIDS and its co-sponsors. Further key alliances have been forged with young people's associations, which have shown themselves ready and willing to fight HIV/AIDS.

As a key priority in its Medium-Term Strategic Plan for 2002- 2005, UNICEF is expanding its efforts to:

--Break the silence surrounding HIV/AIDS, address stigma and discrimination and build young people's participation in responding to the epidemic;

--Ensure that all children and young people are thoroughly informed about HIV/AIDS and have full opportunities to learn the life skills that are key to reducing their vulnerability and avoiding risky behavior;

--Promote and expand access to youth-friendly health services, including access to HIV counseling and testing, condoms and the treatment of sexually transmitted infections;

--Expand and sustain communication and social mobilization initiatives promoting HIV/AIDS awareness and healthy lifestyles;

--Increase the proportion of girls staying in school, and strengthen the capacity of schools to respond to HIV/AIDS;

--Reduce the vulnerability of children and young people at particularly high risk of HIV infection;

--Create environments that empower girls and young women to protect themselves from HIV infection;

--Promote responsible male partnership and participation, and address the gender inequity, violence, discrimination and unequal power relations that fuel epidemics; and

--Ensure that young people are central to the planning, implementation and monitoring of actions that affect them.

Young people will determine the course of HIV/AIDS. UNICEF is dedicated to working with them to ensure that they have the knowledge, skills and confidence to protect themselves and others from this epidemic.

Youth Position Paper on the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS:

During the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS in June 2001, 62 youth participants representing 26 countries presented to world leaders a Youth Position Paper on the Declaration of Commitment agreed to at the Session. Following is an extract:

"Young people are and will remain at the front lines of combating the global AIDS pandemic, however, we can and must do more. We must be bold and assume leadership in breaking the conspiracy of silence and shame that drives AIDS underground and stigmatizes [people living with HIV/AIDS].

Youth commitments:

--We agree to assume leadership responsibilities in our communities, in full partnership with families, schools, faith-based groups, advocates and grassroots organizations.

--We further agree to play a dual role of both direct service provision and engaging in broader processes to advocate, lead, inform and mobilize communities to demand action on AIDS where enough is not being done.

--We commit ourselves to ensuring that young people living with HIV/AIDS assume key leadership positions in youth organizations and are an integral component of our collective efforts to end the epidemic.

--At the national level we pledge to hold governments accountable for their commitments at global and regional level - words are no longer enough.

--We will work with youth organizations globally to monitor governments' progress in ensuring that the rights of young [people living with HIV/AIDS] are respected, by using networks and calling to attention the violation of young people's human rights wherever they come under attack."

UNICEF's current efforts include working with its partners to:

--Train HIV-positive adolescents to be peer counselors in Uganda;

--Facilitate the operation by young people of youth-friendly services in Malawi;

--Collaborate with local NGOs to implement HIV/AIDS education through media, theatre and peer education in Cote d'Ivoire and Namibia;

--Support the Young People's Development Program in reaching out-of-school youth and in creating youth-friendly clinics, information centers, clubs and safe meeting places in Ukraine;

--Initiate HIV education efforts in schools with the Ministries of Education in Myanmar and Viet Nam;

--Promote a communication initiative focusing on prevention, by linking activities to sport and the arts in Honduras;

--Help fulfill the right of all people to life-saving information on HIV/AIDS, through Facts for Life, a simply written but authoritative health promotion guide, of which over 15 million copies are in use in 215 languages.

In addition, 'What every adolescent has a right to know' is a communication initiative with children and young people focusing on HIV/AIDS prevention. It is based on the principle that children and young people have the right to information, skills and a supportive environment to safeguard their well-being and development.

For further information, please check Web site: www.unicef.org/aids

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