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Question 1

How many people are estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS worldwide?

a) Below 20 million

b) 20-30 million

c) 30-40 million

d) 40-50 million

Question 2

To what extent may the HIV/AIDS pandemic be described as global?

a) HIV/AIDS is not confined to sub-Saharan Africa. Every region of the world currently has a significant number of people living with HIV/AIDS and epistemological indicators show that HIV is spreading quickly in Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Caribbean, Russia, and in eastern Europe.

b) The figures compiled by UNAIDS illustrate the global scope of HIV/AIDS very clearly. As of December 2004, UNAIDS estimates that around 39.4 million people are living with HIV or have AIDS, 37.2 million are aged 15-49 and 2.2 million are under 15. In terms of mortality UNAIDS also believes that cumulatively around 25 million people have dies fro AIDS-related illnesses globally to date.

c) The global scope of HIV/AIDS has been difficult to ascertain because comprehensive data on the pandemic is not available to give an approximate representation. Political pressures and logistical difficulties remain an obstacle to international agency's control and in may countries systematic HIV/AIDS surveillance remains inadequate making it very difficult to obtain reliable data and to detect hidden epidemics not captured by existing surveillance mechanisms.

d) All of the above.

Question 3

In what ways has HIV/AIDS been considered within the 'human security' framework?

a) The broadening of the sphere of legitimate security concerns to include a variety of non-military threats to the survival and welfare of individuals and societies, including diseases has been an essentially contestable concept in post-Cold War security studies literature, particularly regarding the analytical utility. Its applicability to the HIV/AIDS pandemic is therefore problematic because it does not show the ways in which it can be reconciled with national security military interests for practitioners of the concept.

b) HIV/AIDS has a plethora of indirect human security threats which have a profound impact on developmental issues. Unlike other illnesses AIDS related illnesses effect people at a much younger and more productive age. There is an important relationship between high HIV prevalence rates and levels of food security and employment.

c) HIV/AIDS is a human security issue; AIDS is a direct threat to human life; and AIDS is also an indirect human security threat having adverse affects on many economic, food, health and personnel security issues of the human security agenda, representing the evolving security dimension of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the individual and social impact.

d) HIV/AIDS implications on human welfare are related to the private spheres of human activity which makes it difficult to be treated within the broader framework of human security as the freedom from violence and want. HIV/AIDS have implications on the levels of education, parenting, and the welfare of individuals may also be affected more intangibly through social stigma and exclusion.

Question 4

In what ways may the security dimensions of HIV/AIDS be considered in the national security framework?

a) High prevalence rates affect the staffing of the armed forces. HIV leads to a decrease in the available civilian conscription pool to draw on new recruits, whilst infected military personnel leads to a loss of experienced command officers and highly specialized and technically trained staff, generating concern about the efficiency and cohesion.

b) High prevalence rates are generating a need for additional resources to train and recruit new soldiers to replace sick ones and more resources will be required for those who are already in the armed forces and require treatment.

c) HIV/AIDS generates a new political and legal challenge for civil-military relations in terms of how to deal with the issue of HIV/AIDS in the ranks and how to teat persons living with HIV.

d) All of the above. Crucially, the armed forces are not a marginal group within the global AIDS pandemic, but occupy a central position within it. Prevalence rates of sexually transmitted diseases among military populations in peacetime are in many cases believed to exceed those of the comparative civilian population.

Question 5

In what ways may the security dimensions of HIV/AIDS be considered in the national security framework as having an economic impact?

a) Competition over state resources between the military and civilian sector will be exacerbated by the fact that HIV/AIDS affects the economically most productive demographic group which undermines the long-term sustainability of the economy.

b) The productive base of the economy is likely to be in decline as the labor market is re-directed to fill the vacuum in the armed forces. Private and foreign investment incentives have followed labor movements towards the industrial-military complex away from commercial and consumer goods.

c) Social polarization between economic classes is likely to diminish given that broad trends demonstrate that unskilled workers are increasingly being required to fill gaps in the job market, specifically for skilled workers and middle management.

d) An increasing proportion of government expenditure is being directed toward investment in technology to reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS related labor shortages in the market. Consequently conservative estimates believe that the earning potential of Africa will stabilize over the next two decades.

Question 6

In what ways does HIV/AIDS have a political impact?

a) HIV/ AIDS is strongly liked to poverty having a large impact on the poor working classes. Social polarization and mass popular discontent will result in the governing elites having to increasingly rely on mechanism of violence to maintain the rule of law. This further weakens the state structures by increasing the role of the military into the public sphere and generating extra challenges to the regime.

b) The second trajectory of political challenges leads to the third trajectory associated with state collapse: the undermining of a range of social institutions: the family; the education system, the healthcare sector which may result in social polarization and radicalization.

c) HIV/AIDS will have a strong affect on the composition of the population. Demographic challenges to the changing social ontology of states with a high mortality rate from AIDS related illness will result in a 'top-heavy' population - aged 40 and over - creating a vacuum in the younger generations .

d) HIV/AIDS could facilitate the escalation of the privatization of healthcare as the pressures placed on health structures become too great to be supported by central government. Under such conditions state services would be limited to only the most basic of services. International aid organizations may have to fill the void of governmental functions. Paradoxically however this may contribute to the spread of the disease.

Question 7

Are peacekeepers contributing or mitigating the containment of the outbreak of HIV/AIDS?

a) The extent to which peacekeepers operate as vectors of HIV/AIDS is difficult to establish. Peacekeeping mission are typically deployed to conflict situations wherein social and economic institutions are weak, there is high population mobility, poor access to education and health and poverty, the latter of which frequently correlated to the emergence of an operative sex trade. These factors vastly contribute to the numbers of HIV/AIDS incidents which makes it problematic to separate under the possibility of enumerate causal variables.

b) Citation of the problem of peacekeepers sourcing the spread of HIV in a decision not to host a peacekeeping mission has not credibly been linked to HIV/AIDS as a distinct security dimension to security policy. Although AIDS/HIV may be a justifiable concern in the decision not to host or source a mission, the extent to which this dominates as the primary security concern is debatable because the decision often coincides with the presence of other interests or motivations.

c) There has been what may be described as increasing incidents of crisis of political will to source peacekeeping operations based upon the recognition that peacekeepers can act as vectors of HIV. As a result HIV/AIDS is being increasingly politicized within the hosting of peacekeeping mission, governments requesting that only HIV-negative soldiers are deployed.

d) All of the above

Question 8

In what ways might HIV/Aids have an impact on international peace-keeping missions?

a) The correlation between incident rates of HIV infection against the duration of peacekeepers deployment has yet to substantiate a direct relationship between the risks posed to military personnel comparable to that of the ordinary citizen.

b) Empirical evaluation of the correlation between peacekeeping exercises and HIV prevalence has established a link to the ability to staff operations with medically fit personnel. However the relationship extends to African personnel and has yet to manifest on the western strategic decision-making agenda.

c) HIV/AIDS has been increasingly politicized within the context of the political will to host or to deploy peacekeeping operations. It is extremely difficult to staff international peacekeeping operations if the latter is to be manned by HIV-negative soldiers only. Staffing difficulties undermines the sufficiency of peacekeeping forces to meet operational demands.

d) The correlate between peacekeeping missions and HIV incidence rate was dependent on the presence of the variable of additional high-risk groups - such as sex workers- to link the two risk groups to a given duration of deployment.

Question 9

What have the implications of the human, national, and international security dimensions of the HIV/AIDS pandemic been on the future of global security studies?

a) Awareness of the human, national, and international security dimensions of HIV/AIDS is necessary for arriving at a comprehensive understanding of the nature and the extent of the contemporary pandemic. While the economic and social implications are now being considered more widely and seriously by scholars and policy-makers on a country-by-country basis, this is not yet occurring with reference to the security dimensions of HIV/AIDS

b) It is necessary to acknowledge the security dimension of HIV/AIDS in order for the level of international response to become commensurate with the extent of the challenge posed by the AIDS challenge. These security challenges must be taken seriously because of the armed forces - as a high risk group and vector of the virus - must make a contribution to international efforts to reduce the transmission rates.

c) The armed forces will have to address the issue of HIV/AIDS with due consideration that human beings living with the virus are not the enemy in the quest to address the illness and consequently should be included, not excluded from the processes.

d) All of the above.

Question 10

In what ways has the HIV/AIDS pandemic begun to affect the South African National Defense Force (SANDF)?

a) Testing of SANDF personnel have shown that of the 89 percent of those testing positive to HIV, the average age was 34, 60 percent of whom were un-married.

b) SANDF estimates that HIV prevalence in the armed forces approximates to the prevalence rate amongst the civilian population at 21.5 percent.

c) Voluntary testing program of SANDF forces has shown a concentration of those tested positive to be in the age range of 18-25.

d) SANDF estimates the number of HIV infected personnel to be slightly higher that the civilian population at 23 percent although analysts estimate that it could be as high as 40 percent.

Oxford University Press, Online Resource Centre, Chapter 18.

Chapter 18

Instructions