[Orphans, AIDS, and the Millennium Development Goals: models and capacity to act]

The impact of HIV/AIDS on children is considerable. Parental illness and loss affect their children's psychosocial, economic and family well-being, limit the children's access to basic social services and undermining their chances of survival and their future. Although these children, orphaned and vulnerable because of HIV/AIDS, present a true social crisis, they have, since the beginning of the epidemic, been largely left out of the global and national fight against AIDS. The aim of this study is to analyse the achievement of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 6 through the support for these children in Africa. Using an inductive comprehensive approach based on the history of the fight against AIDS in three countries Cameroon, Uganda and South Africa, we seek to show that achievement of the MDGs is largely contextual. The weaknesses, deficiencies and policy failures of MDGs should not be treated as mere technical or local issues. They involve political and social questions that are not new. The second approach, from a top-down perspective, helped us to study the State in action. What can we learn about the State's capacity to reach the MDGs by 2015 from the care they currently provide to orphaned and vulnerable children?