The Foreign Service Journal, December 2004

a former vice president of the World Bank, provided a sobering testimonial on the disease’s impact in Zimbabwe when he stated, “Further, if the worst pro- jections come to pass, by about 2010 life expectancy will return virtually to where it stood the day I was born, in what was then Southern Rhodesia, half a cen- tury ago.” While the drop in life expectancy is dramatic in and of itself, these figures gain even more importance when their impact on decision-making and personal action is considered. Individuals and societies become more reluctant to commit to long-term education and train- ing programs as life expectancies drop. Such invest- ments in human capital, the people who make up a nation, not only demonstrate a faith and hope for the future, and pay dividends in the immediate gains of increased productivity, but also in the commitment to future progress and development. HIV makes such investment much more risky and less likely, further decreasing the ability of peoples and governments to maximize their potential and improve their standard of living. Perhaps the most malignant and corrosive impact of HIV is on the social fabric of a nation, tearing families and communities apart, and creating long-term prob- lems that will long outlive the immediate results of HIV infections. The skyrocketing numbers of orphans resulting from HIV/AIDS deaths in sub-Saharan Africa is both a short and long-term burden for these fragile states. In the short term, governments must provide services for these children who have lost connections to family and community, often with resources that do not exist. In the long term, the situation is even more alarming, as millions of orphans are reaching adulthood without the benefit of social integration, lacking educa- tion or training, and without any concept of a future. J. Brian Atwood, former administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, summed up the potential catastrophe of AIDS orphans in a 1997 speech when he stated, “This outgrowth of the F O C U S 26 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 4