World AIDS Day 2008
World AIDS Day is an important opportunity to take stock of the progress made in responding to HIV and AIDS and a chance to act together for an AIDS-free future
Since 2005 we have been campaigning to achieve the target - set by world leaders - of HIV prevention, treatment and care for all those with HIV and AIDS by 2010.
However, our experience shows that women and girls are being prevented from getting the medical care and support they need, whether that is information about HIV or access to antiretroviral treatment.
Unless we protect women's rights, the goal of universal access will never be reached.
More than 15 million women are living with HIV globally. Every half minute another becomes infected. Women make up 61% of those infected with HIV & AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa and 64% of 15 to 24 year-olds living with HIV in all developing countries. The world is only beginning to recognize that the HIV is now a predominately female disease and that its spread is being accelerated by the very high level of violence against women in many countries.
In some countries, nearly a third of women report that their first sexual experience was forced or coerced and, globally, the United Nations estimates that a third of women experience abuse. Sexual violence against women increases exposure to infection. In addition, inequality often prevents women from negotiating whether to have sex, who they marry, or whether their spouse is faithful to them. In this scenario, it is impossible for a woman to insist that their partners use a condom.
For women who are diagnosed with HIV, the stigma and discrimination they face from their families and communities can cause or exacerbate violence against them. It also means they are less able to access the treatment, care and support services they are entitled to Yet most HIV & AIDS prevention programs fail to recognize that violence against women (VAW) is a key transmission channel for infection. In recent years the US government has conditioned its HIV prevention funding around the “Abstain, Be faithful or use a Condom” (ABC) paradigm, a strategy based more on values than on empirical evidence about how to stop the spread of the virus. ABC offers no protection at all to women exposed to HIV & AIDS through rape, coercion or abuse.
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