Book Review: Race Against Time (by Allison Martell)
This is not a review, in the strictest sense. Over the last year, Five Minutes to Midnight published a series of articles on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). I did not take the campaign as seriously as I should have; the world is full of unachievable UN goals. Then, this fall, I picked up Stephen Lewis's Race Against Time. It changed my mind. Reviews usually offer criticism, and a detached sort of praise. I am not much interested in pointing out the flaws in this book. I am interested in convincing people to read it.
You need to read this book because it is important. Important almost by definition. Every year, a person of distinction delivers five Massey lectures in five Canadian cities. The talks are broadcast by the CBC and published as a book. Stephen Lewis was this year's Massey lecturer, and Race Against Time is his book.
A formal biography of Stephen Lewis might tell you that he was elected to the Ontario legislature at the age of 26, and went on to lead the Ontario New Democratic Party and then represent Canada at the United Nations. He is part of the Canadian left wing's power family, including his wife Michele Landsberg, son Avi Lewis and daughter-in-law Naomi Klein. But right now, Stephen Lewis is the United Nations Secretary General's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. The job consumes him. This is where he is coming from, and why he has written 200 pages of focused, constructive grief. The words are incredibly powerful.
Despite Lewis's position, Race Against Time is not strictly about HIV/AIDS in Africa. It is about the Millennium Development Goals, a set of targets set in 2000 to be reached by 2015. Let's refresh our memories:
- Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- Achieve universal primary education
- Promote gender equality and empower women
- Reduce child mortality
- Improve maternal health
- Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
- Ensure environmental stability
- Develop a global partnership for development
The goals will not be met. HIV/AIDS is connected to all of the MDGs because reaching them could improve the epidemic, and because the epidemic makes reaching them more difficult. This is Lewis's central point, but the details he lays out, particularly on importance of education and women's rights, deserve our attention. This book reminds us how widely applicable the MDGs are.
You can't discuss MDGs without discussing the United Nations. Though he is a self-described "devotee" of the UN, Lewis is relentlessly critical. From parenthetical jabs ("you need practically a lifetime to master communications within the UN") to damning anecdotes about his work in New York, he is finished holding a united front.
"I realize that I'm running a risk in these lectures," he says. "Some of the things I'm saying, some of the arguments I'm making, will rub UN officialdom and various politicians the wrong way." This may be true, but as many discuss UN reform, Race Against Time offers valuable insight.
Important things are being said. Even so, some might shy away from this book because of its potential to upset. The back cover, after all, tells us it is "heartbreaking." It is. Lewis tells simple, painful stories about the people he has encountered in his work, and maybe these are things we need to read and remember. But reading is only the beginning.
The most striking part of the book is the fifth section, where Lewis discusses solutions. He calls for the cancellation of the agricultural subsidies that keep Africa out of international markets and the debts that cripple the continent's social services, a strong UN agency for women's issues, more treatment and food aid, the end of school fees, and much more. These are big ideas, but Race Against Time does not leave us hopeless.
"At the level of the grand design – more money, more drugs, more prevention, more care," says Lewis, "hope is instinctive."
We are left thinking that if the world got behind Lewis' solutions, we might beat back the epidemic. But the world is not behind these solutions, any more than it is behind the Millennium Development Goals. Lewis says that he lives in rage. As we read his words, we join him.
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