Content Type
FOUND 1377
This background paper explores the situation for young women in Kenya, where they are four times more likely to contract HIV than young men. The author points to multi-sectoral policy interventions as necessary to better protect young women and to create an enabling environment where they can make healthier sexual decisions.
This report, submitted by the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights analyses the relationship between unpaid care work and poverty, inequality, and women's human rights. Additionally, the report clarifies the obligations of States, reminding them that failure to adequately support care contradicts their human rights obligations by creating and exacerbating inequalities and provides recommendations on how to…
HIV self-testing (HIVST) allows people to test in private. It is part of national policy in some countries including Kenya, with others considering introduction. In 2011, two pilot studies were conducted providing HIVST to health-workers in Kenya, and to community members in Malawi. This Report is based on the first global HIVST consultation (2013) to discuss legal, ethical, gender, human rights and public health implications of HIVST scale-up.…
This resource is designed to assist governments, civil society and other HIV actors to address multi-dimensional gender and human rights issues in their national HIV efforts and support increased capacity to achieve gender equality results. It provides an explanation of why a gender-transformative approach is vital to curbing and reversing the spread and impact of HIV; a strategic outline for designing a national HIV strategy or plan that…
This brief examines the importance of women's land and property rights in the contexts of HIV and AIDS, violence against women, and food security. Land and property rights increase women's autonomy—decreasing their dependence on men and entrapment in abusive relationships, enabling greater control over sexual relations, and improving their ability to produce food for themselves and their families. This paper examines where and how these…
In South Africa, gender inequalities give men considerable relational power over young women, particularly in circumstances of poverty and where sex is materially rewarded. In this paper, the authors use qualitative interviews and ethnographic observation among 16 young women from the rural Eastern Cape to explore ways young women construct their femininities and exercise agency. The data were collected as part of an evaluation of Stepping…
This paper addresses the urgent need to rebalance HIV investments between treatment and prevention and to develop evidence-based approaches for protecting the large and vulnerable populations of adolescent girls who remain at risk of HIV. This paper outlines a stepwise engagement process for improving girls’ lives and reducing their HIV risk.
This article examines the role that gender inequality plays in limiting vertical HIV transmission (PMTCT) programmatic progress. The authors highlight a growing body of evidence that suggests that gender inequality, including gender-based violence, is a key obstacle to better outcomes related to all four components of a comprehensive PMTCT programme. Effective community- and facility-based strategies to transform harmful gender norms and…
This advocacy brief provides key messages to inspire actions that respond to the needs and rights of women. The brief is divided into five chapters: first, identifying violence against women as a human rights violation; second, setting forth the link between violence against women and increased risk of HIV infection; third, highlighting that women living with HIV are most vulnerable to violence; fourth, explaining that the women must vulnerable…
This article presents baseline data from the SASA! (Swahili for 'now') Study, a cluster randomized trial of a community-mobilization intervention to prevent violence against women and HIV/AIDS in Kampala, Uganda. Findings confirm the importance of integrated strategies for intimate partner violence and HIV prevention.
This article considers the contextual factors underpinning the differential vulnerabilities of women and men in the workplace in South Africa. By relying on the existing literature and interviews with 33 key informants, the paper examines the extent to which South African workplaces are recognising women's social and biological vulnerability to HIV. In particular, the paper considers the potential role of the workplace in responding to…
The sixth edition of the Children and AIDS Stocktaking Report examines the progress being made and continuing challenges in the response to HIV and AIDS for children in low- and middle-income countries. This report is part of the series first launched in 2005, with data and analysis on the response to HIV and AIDS among children in low-and middle-income countries. Based on 2012 country data, the report notes great progress in preventing mother…
As the 20th International AIDS Conference opens in Melbourne this weekend, Alice Welbourn reflects on how global policies still fail to acknowledge the gender dimensions of this pandemic, or take into account the new broader medico-ethical debates which echo many of the concerns of women living with HIV. Read full article…
In a busy Mozambique clinic, a 25-year-old mother says she won’t tell her estranged husband she has HIV for fear she will be blamed and beaten. Read full article here
The twin pandemics of violence against women (VAW) and HIV/AIDS are each rooted in gender discrimination, women’s subordination, disregard for women’s human rights, and the power imbalances between women and men that exist in societies all over the world. Violence against women and HIV/AIDS are also inextricably intertwined and mutually reinforcing in the lives of millions of women and girls: women who are subject to violence are more…
In the context of widespread sexual violence and its reciprocal links to HIV, Alice Welbourn reports on how the formal scientific evidence base alone is beginning to be recognized as not fit-for-purpose to safeguard women's rights. Read full article here
The Gauteng health department has made an out-of-court settlement agreement to pay almost half-a-million rand to an HIV-positive woman for damages for the pain and suffering she endured as a result of being coercively sterilized in a state hospital. The department confirmed on Friday that the settlement was made last month. Activists say the outcome of the nearly two year-long legal battle is a ‘landmark and sets a precedent for other…
HIV-positive women respond well to a vaccine against the human papillomavirus (HPV), even when their immune system is struggling, according to newly published results of an international clinical trial. Read full article here
The briefs are intended as a resource for policymakers in Member States of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as well as planners, programme managers, health professionals, service providers, civil society organizations, including key population networks, women’s rights organizations, and others who are advocating for the needs and rights of key affected women and girls. It is hoped that key affected women and girls in each…
Commentary by Lynne Featherstone and Annie Lennox: Tears may dry in seconds. Bruises may disappear in days – and scars might eventually fade. But of all the devastating consequences of violence against women and girls, there is one lasting impact that cannot be hidden underneath clothing or concealed behind a forced smile. In sub-Saharan Africa every minute of every day a woman becomes infected with HIV, adding to…