Call for Papers
ISS Conference on HIV/AIDS: Trends, Impact Studies and Policy Development within Armed Forces in Africa

The MilAIDS Project of the Defence Sector Programme (DSP) at the ISS is planning to host a three-day conference from Wednesday 21 November until Friday 23 November 2007 in Tshwane (Pretoria). The conference is designed to harness multi-disciplinary research skills within the field of HIV/AIDS and the Armed Forces in Africa, bringing together policy-makers, practitioners and scholars whose research interests coincide with the activities of the Security Sector and Peacekeeping Missions in Africa.

Background: Since the 1980s, the Security Sector in Africa has experienced the increasing incidence of HIV/AIDS within uniformed and non-uniformed members. Yet, there is still no cure available leaving the numbers of those infected and affected, escalating drastically. As the evidence gathered in the baseline study: The Enemy Within: Southern African Militaries' Quarter-Century Battle with HIV/AIDS (ISS, 2006) has shown, the phenomenon of HIV/AIDS has left nations struggling to put into place appropriate policies that deal with the diverse challenges of recruitment; care and support for those affected; nutrition; home-based care and early retirements based on deteriorating health, whilst still maintaining effectiveness and required operational outputs such as participation in peace support operations. The same is also true of policy-making institutions that are responsible for deploying forces in response to the many conflicts in Africa. In this regard, because of the nature of HIV/AIDS, a disease that has the ability to mutate and change shape and form, this has left affected bodies and actors dependent on ad-hoc and under-developed policy options to guide their responses and strategies while continuing to uphold the primary functions of national and regional security.

Against this background, the goal of the conference is to expand the work established under 'The Enemy Within' - namely expanding the baseline study towards informing policy options for comprehensively combating HIV/AIDS within the Armed Forces in Africa and by extension, throughout African communities.

Themes: The research focus areas are divided in the three themes of:
1. Understanding the impact of HIV/AIDS on security forces in specific countries and sub-regions and evaluating the adopted policy options.

2. The policy challenges that HIV/AIDS poses to peace missions in Africa and related policy recommendations.

3. The implications of and responses to the UN position on Male Circumcision (MC) as part of the wider set of options to combat the pandemic.
Papers should address one or more of the following issues:
• Understanding the emergence and spread of HIV/AIDS in a particular country or sub-region and the policy response that have been attempted to address the problem
• Challenges of regeneration of Armed Forces: Recruiting and HIV/AIDS
• Options for administrative re-mustering of infected and affected members and financial burden implications
• Evaluation of the effectiveness or otherwise of external support to Armed Forces in combating HIV/AIDS
• Effectiveness of national sub-regional and regional policies
• Culture, peacekeeping and HIV/AIDS
• Male Circumcision (MC), attitudes and roll out challenges
• Challenges of drug procurement, distribution, availability as well as access of regimes
• Interrogating existing (policy) options on HIV/AIDS at the UN and AU levels
• Examining synergies between Armed Forces and society for combating HIV/AIDS

Authors wishing to present a paper at the conference must submit in advance, as a requirement for acceptance, a summary or abstract in English of the proposed content with a maximum of 500 words, setting out the general interest of the paper for the participants at the Conference, describing the contents of the paper and its relevance to the chosen theme. Abstracts should be submitted to Dr Martin Rupiya at [email][email protected] by 31 August 2007. They must include the following details:

- Title of the proposed paper.
- Name of the author, organization to which he or she belongs and email address.
- If there are several authors, please give the particulars of each of them.

Authors of accepted abstracts will be notified by 17 September regarding acceptance of abstracts. Accepted papers should average around 5 000 words and must be submitted to Dr Martin Rupiya by 31 October 2007. Early submission of articles is strongly encouraged. Authors should adopt the style guideline for the in-house ISS publication, the African Security Review available at http://www.issafrica.org If you have any queries regarding the submission of abstracts and papers, please contact:

Dr Martin R. Rupiya,
MilAIDS Project Manager,
Tel: +27(12)346 9534 Fax: +27(12)460 0998
Cell: +27 84654 8718
Email: [email][email protected]