Stephen Lewis

With your indulgence, I’m going to deviate from the assigned topic. I shall address the Millennium Development Goals, but not in the way that was anticipated. There are two reasons.

When I served at the United Nations in the 1980s, out of the then 159 Member States there were three represented by women ambassadors. One of them was the formidable feminist and quite wonderful human being, Dame Nita Barrow of Barbados.

Predictably, President Johnson-Sirleaf is thunderstruck by the force of the sexual violence. In a very real sense she is staking the integrity of her tenure on her ability to confront and subdue the war on women.

The book is also a compelling challenge to most of the orthodoxy that clutters the world of HIV/AIDS.

There is a crying need for an international agency for women. Every stitch of evidence we have, right across the entire spectrum of gender inequality suggests the urgent need for a multilateral agency.