The Female Condom around for over a decade

The 10 & 11th of September Dialogues on the "Universal Access To Female Condom... A Human Rights Issue" took place. The event was successfully hosted by the Thohoyandou Victim Empowerment Programme or the TVEP (www.ahumanrightsissue.blogspot.com) and attended by many organisations and political affiliates, however with little key Government representation. During the sessions, presentations were given on studies reporting on how the female condom is an effective prevention method against STIs and HIV/AIDS.

The focus question therefore became: how come is the female condom not widely made available? From the many discussions coming out of the dialogues, it was also reported that providing the female condom offers an alternative choice to the male condom, it will allow for women to express the potential to take control in practicing safe sex and that it can be used as a sex toy. At the end of the dialogues, the following Position Paper was drafted and later released to support the argument that the lack of female condoms is a human rights issue!!

Declaration

Our own Constitution provides for the establishment of a society based on social justice and fundamental rights, and a society where the quality of life of all citizens should be improved; and where the full potential of the citizens should be realized.

The right to basic health care provides for the right of every person ‘to make decisions concerning reproduction,’ and the right to have access to ‘reproductive health care.’ In its General Comment No 12, (the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health), the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), defined reproductive health as follows: “Reproductive health means that women and men have the freedom to decide if and when to reproduce and the right to be informed and to have access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods of family planning of their choice as well as the right of access to appropriate health care services that will, for example, enable women to go safely through pregnancy and childbirth,”

The following declaration was taken by representatives of Civil Society and other stakeholders at the Inaugural 2008 TVEP Female Condom Dialogues held at the Garden Court ORT, Johannesburg from the 10th to 11th of September 2008. We the undersigned declare:

• Lack of adequate access to Female Condoms constitutes a human rights violation.

• An expanded definition of human rights inclusive of such issues as choice, accessibility and gender should be supported.

• Access to free and easily accessible quality female condoms restores women’s self- esteem and dignity

• The Female Condom is the only female initiated and controlled prevention and protection method and as such full participation of all stakeholders and the private sector must be incorporated into any strategy relating to access.

• The inequitable distribution of female and male condoms in the current National Strategic Plan is unacceptable and should be challenged immediately.

• Social norms are the major drivers of discrimination and inequalities and they contribution towards the feminization of HIV.

• The use of any condom further empowers people o reduce the rate of reinfection and increased the total number of protected sex acts.

We further acknowledge that Universal Access to Female Condoms can only be achieved through enhanced o Resource Allocation o Education & Training o Infrastructure Development and o Ensuring adequate policy implementation o The roll out of male circumcision as an HIV prevention method need to be further investigated as to the impact of women’s risks and vulnerabilities to HIV. In the context of potential decreased male condom use as a result of MC programmes, we strongly believe that universal access to female condoms is thus understood as a pre-requisite