Stephen Lewis: Up Close & Personal

For the past few years, Canada's Stephen Lewis has captured our global attention and become a media darling in the process, a man possessed with an Obama-like gift of oratory and fiery inspiration, and a moral compass on AIDS. As the former UN Special Envoy to Africa on AIDS, Lewis played the role of a candid Cassandra, publicly warning his bosses about the dire consequences of what he called the UN's 'abject failure' to provide leadership in the epidemic.

His willingness to push the envelope and speak out on controversial issues -- for example, denouncing South Africa's President Mbeki's denialism of HIV and AIDS -- gained him millions of fans, but a share of enemies too, especially within the UN 'family.' "You must understand that I was biting my tongue all the time" Lewis says frankly of his stint as Envoy.

He's also been that rarest of birds: an outspoken feminist man who's called men and women leaders to the carpet for their failure to deliver on the needs of women globally. He refers to petty in-fighting inside a male-centric UN like someone who's one of the family yet still cares --which he was and does, serving as Deputy Director of UNICEF from 1995-1999.

Today, Lewis and his colleague Paula Donovan have set up a new international advocacy organization, AIDS-Free World, pursuing a grand vision he began championing while Envoy: the creation of a new UN agency for women.

"I saw what wonders could be achieved when you have a UN agency engaged in an issue, and when you have the money," he says, explaining the vision. "UNICEF has $2 billion dollars. It became clear that, if we were able to fashion an agency for women, the same thing would happen." He's also convinced that a radical pinking of the UN is just the deep fix needed to make the system more effective in delivering social change at many levels, across many sectors.

"Nobody's done anything for women," says Lewis frankly, with familiar exasperation. "What do I have to say? There has been no movement on women within the United Nations for more than 60 years except in tiny little microscopic increments interventions that amount to nothing. The High Level Committee recommended an international agency for women because they felt the response to women had been abysmal. . So there is no argument for those who would argue for the status quo."

To watch and listen to the full conversation with Stephen Lewis, click here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5770044231

For more from Donovan, listen to the conversation at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8438861272315837390

More Choice Words from our video conversation with Stephen Lewis...

"Look, the UN is the single most powerful vehicle on the ground. It has the people, it has the ear of government, it has a lot of money, it has spectacular access in so many ways, it has huge knowledge... It can draw consultants from anywhere, on any issue. If it gets leadership from the center, you could have turned this epidemic around. If there weren't so many wilting recalcitrants watching what was going on, you could have made a much greater impact...

"I'll give you one example... through all of the years of Thabo Mbeki's denialism in South Africa, all of the years of lunatic, I mean really almost psychotic behavior of his minister of health, while hundreds of thousands -- millions of people were being infected and dying of AIDS, the UN offered not one word of criticism at the highest levels. Not a word. It's unbelievable."

"I must say...one of the things we were able to do as we traveled was to bring the people living with AIDS into the mix much more forcefully than would otherwise have been the case. I talked to presidents about them, and cabinet ministers about them, and represented their views which they conveyed to me and made them feel they had an honest-to-God advocate within the UN system, which perplexed them greatly, since they didn't often have that kind of access to the UN system."

"You can't really be an adequate women's advocate under the circumstance and hold a high level position in an organization [the UN] that has betrayed women over all these years - it's just too difficult to pull off. People should be resigning on all fronts in protest at what has not been done for women."