[ppi] [ppiindia] A comprehensive strategy to protect women

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 A comprehensive strategy to protect women
  Various IHT Monday, April 26, 2004

The global fight against AIDS

This article was written by Carin Jämtin, Sweden's minister of development
cooperation; Hilde F. Johnson, Norway's minister of international
development; Paula Lehtomäki, Finland's minister for foreign trade and
development; Per Stig Moller, Denmark's minister of foreign affairs, and
Peter Piot, executive director of Unaids.
.
GENEVA For a long time, AIDS has been seen as a disease striking mainly men.
Today, over 20 years into the epidemic, women account for half of the 40
million people living with HIV worldwide. In Africa, where the epidemic is
older, 60 percent of people with HIV are women. Young women aged 15 to 24
are 2.5 times more likely to be infected than young men.
.
Women's vulnerability to HIV has many reasons, including inadequate
knowledge about the disease, insufficient access to sexual and reproductive
health and educational services, inability to negotiate safer sex due to
gender discrimination and imbalances of power, and a lack of
female-controlled HIV prevention methods, such as the female condom and
microbicides.
.
As long as women are unable to exercise education, property rights, freedom
from violence and economic security, progress on the AIDS front will pass
them by.
.
The ABC slogan - abstain, be faithful, use a condom - is the mainstay of
many HIV prevention programs. But for too many women, this message is
insufficient. Where rape and other forms of sexual violence are widespread,
abstaining or insisting on the use of a condom is not realistic. Between one
fifth and a half of all girls and young women around the world report that
their first sexual encounter was forced. Only 11 percent of women in Zambia
believed they have the right to ask a husband to use a condom.
.
Nor does marriage provide the answer. The reality across the developing
world is that the majority of women are married by age 20 and have higher
rates of HIV than their unmarried, sexually active peers. At the same time,
women bear a disproportionate share of the burden of AIDS care. In poor
households, the presence of an AIDS patient can absorb a third of all
household labor, most of it by women.
.
The knock-on effect of the plunge in household income caused by AIDS is
often to pull children out of school, and girls are usually the first to go.
Across Africa, formal school participation is declining.
.
The answers to reducing women's vulnerability to AIDS clearly lie deeper
than in the use of slogans.
.
To address AIDS effectively, we have to understand how women are being
treated and why. A comprehensive strategy is needed to boost girls' access
to education, to strengthen legal protection for women's property and
inheritance rights, to combat sexual harassment and violence against women,
and to ensure they have access to HIV care and prevention services.
.
Around the world, property rights are often enshrined in national
constitutions and international human rights treaties. However, a large
majority of women is denied this right, rendering them even more vulnerable
to violence, poverty and homelessness. Poverty can also fuel HIV
transmission as women engage in unsafe sex in exchange for money, housing,
food or education.
.
Tackling these inequalities is not just a matter for women - men must also
be fully involved. For starters, men need to declare zero tolerance for
violence against women. They must become committed to their daughters'
education and help alleviate the burden of care.
.
The Nordic countries have a long tradition of asserting the rights of women,
both nationally and internationally. We are fully aware that we need to do
more to ensure that these rights are respected in all our efforts to fight
HIV/AIDS. We know that targeting women is not enough. Unless men change
their behavior, we will make limited progress on this front.
.
Moves are under way - the push to achieve education for all, or the campaign
by the World Health Organization and Unaids to ensure that three million
people in the developing world have access to HIV treatment by 2005. But
more is needed, urgently.
.
The escalating global struggle against AIDS cannot afford to neglect women,
and special efforts will be needed to ensure it is not allowed to. To that
end, Unaids has pulled together a group of men and women - the Global
Coalition on Women and AIDS - which gathers activists, government
representatives, celebrities and community workers who are committed to
improving the lives of women and girls.
.
The call to empower women is not new, but the devastation of AIDS makes it
more urgent. Millions of women around the world were already facing a
lifetime of hard labor for few rewards. AIDS has turned it into a death
sentence.
.
The skills, knowledge and resources to relieve women of the devastating
burden of AIDS already exist. What is needed now is the political will to
ensure that they make a difference on the ground.








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