Just 5 per cent of the global HIV/AIDS budget reaches children, according to the executive director of UNICEF Ireland.
Speaking as a two-day international conference on children and HIV got underway in Dublin yesterday, Ms Maura Quinn said children had to be a priority in addressing this issue.
"Wealthy nations have a fundamental role in stepping up the response to HIV/AIDS, especially on the children issue," she said. "As a body of national committees worldwide we are committed to increasing our resources for UNICEF programmes for children and, in particular, championing the cause of children growing alone as a result of HIV/AIDS."
The conference brings together 37 national UNICEF committees at the 49th annual meeting. This is the first time it has been held in Ireland.
Addressing the opening session, the President, Mrs McAleese, said the impact of HIV/AIDS was to take away a nation's very life-source - "its people, its future". For children there was "the devastation of losing one or both parents, brothers and sisters, friends, carers, teachers community builders".
"It is hard to forget the poverty stricken grandparents I met in east Africa, left in their hundreds of thousands to raise their children alone."
The entertainer, Harry Belafonte, now a UNICEF goodwill ambassador, was sharply critical of the impact western policies had in Africa and the developing world. He said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank contributed to the misery of a lot of people. A lot of people would like to blame Africa's problems on "primitivism" or to "distance themselves from the part Europe and America play in the problems".
"The situation is replete with nations who cut a deal with the IMF or the World Bank which has left them in an infinitely worse position than they were before."
