Curbing Violence Against Women Can Cut AIDS
21 Oct 2008
21 Oct 2008
The war against HIV/AIDS will not be won unless sexual and gender-based violence is reduced, experts are realising.
Participants at a recent regional meeting looking at linkages between violence against women and girls and HIV/AIDS described the two as dual pandemics that needed to be addressed concurrently for the HIV/AIDS fight to be successful.
"We have continued to treat these two issues separately, yet they go hand in hand. The complexity of HIV/AIDS calls upon us to join together and seriously address sexual violence," noted Ludfine Anyango of the United Nations Development Program.
Held in Nairobi, the conference on Strengthening Linkages between Sexual and Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS Services, gathered donors, civil society and government officers working in the health sector in 13 countries in East, Central and Southern Africa.
The severity of sexual violence in Africa was reiterated by Nduku Kilonzo, the director of Liverpool VCT, a Kenyan nongovernmental organisation advocating for HIV prevention, treatment and care, which organised the conference.
"Sexual violence is fundamentally a public health problem that often times results in HIV/AIDS. We know that due to violence, many women are prone to the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. For this reason, we must start to look at sexual and gender-based violence as a key intervention when addressing HIV/AIDS," she asserted.
Her remarks echo those of the World Health Organisation, which has it that the risk of HIV transmission is greater when sex is forced and therefore the need to address sexual violence in countries' HIV/AIDS plans. A report by WHO, presented at the meeting, shows that 39 percent of sexually active girls in South Africa say they have been forced to have sex. This in a country with approximately 5.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS, among the highest rates in the world, according to 2008 statistics from the joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS.
Sexual and gender violence is also widespread in East Africa, where states like Kenya have continued to record an increase in the number of sexually abused women and girls. The 2003 Kenya Demographic Health Survey (which is the latest available) indicates that 43 percent of 15- 49-year-old women reported having experienced some form of gender based violence in their lifetime, with 29 percent reporting an experience in the previous year. About 16 percent of women reported having ever been sexually assaulted, up from 13 percent in the previous year.
Statistics like those have prompted critics to ask why legislation outlawing sexual violence is failing. International and regional instruments that require signatories to address violence against women and girls have come under the spotlight.
Examples include the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979, which recognises women's right to violence-free lives; the Beijing Platform for Action adopted in 1995 that calls upon governments to take measures to address violence against women.
More recently, U.N. Security Council Declaration 1325 -- passed in 2000 -- made an urgent call to end impunity for sexual violence. In 2005, a Protocol condemning violence against women and girl children was ratified and added to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights.
It is argued that lax implementation of these instruments stems from the lack of sanctions or punitive measures against countries that fail to adhere to them.
Domestic laws that seek to address sexual violence have been criticised as lenient and overtly flawed. In Kenya and Uganda, the maximum sentence for rape is life imprisonment, but the law is silent on the minimum sentence.
Kenya's Sexual Offences Act, passed two years ago, leaves punishment to the discretion of the magistrate. Civil society groups are concerned that paves the way for magistrates to hand down sentences that would not reflect the severity of sexual offenses.
However, even as the clamor for these laws intensifies, the issue of rape within the context of marriage is even more serious. In most countries across Africa, marital rape is not acknowledged by the law as a form of sexual violence, exposing many women to HIV infection by their partners.
The WHO report presented at the Nairobi meeting indicates that increasing numbers of married women are getting infected due to their partners' behavior. The report cites three studies in India, in which more than 80 percent of HIV positive women were monogamous.
This scenario is reflected in several parts of Africa where women -- even those who know her partner is HIV positive -- are unable to practice safer sex.
"Many women are afraid to say no to sex with their spouses because they may be beaten. They cannot even ask their partners to use condoms because they will be battered or suspected to be having other affairs. In the end, they are forced to have sex without protection and may end up getting infected," Vivian Sebahire, coordinator of Solidarity Women for Development in Congo, said at the conference.
Such incidents are causing fear of increasing cases of HIV/AIDS in a country whose prevalence rate is at 4.1 percent.
What came out clearly at the conference was the fact that in most African countries, organisations working on the prevention of violence against women are not specifically addressing women's vulnerability to HIV/AIDS infection and vice versa, jeopardising effective action.
It is therefore imperative, analysts argue, that countries enact laws that recognise and specifically address sexual violence -- particularly within marriage -- in order to win the war against HIV/AIDS.
Participants at a recent regional meeting looking at linkages between violence against women and girls and HIV/AIDS described the two as dual pandemics that needed to be addressed concurrently for the HIV/AIDS fight to be successful.
"We have continued to treat these two issues separately, yet they go hand in hand. The complexity of HIV/AIDS calls upon us to join together and seriously address sexual violence," noted Ludfine Anyango of the United Nations Development Program.
Held in Nairobi, the conference on Strengthening Linkages between Sexual and Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS Services, gathered donors, civil society and government officers working in the health sector in 13 countries in East, Central and Southern Africa.
The severity of sexual violence in Africa was reiterated by Nduku Kilonzo, the director of Liverpool VCT, a Kenyan nongovernmental organisation advocating for HIV prevention, treatment and care, which organised the conference.
"Sexual violence is fundamentally a public health problem that often times results in HIV/AIDS. We know that due to violence, many women are prone to the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. For this reason, we must start to look at sexual and gender-based violence as a key intervention when addressing HIV/AIDS," she asserted.
Her remarks echo those of the World Health Organisation, which has it that the risk of HIV transmission is greater when sex is forced and therefore the need to address sexual violence in countries' HIV/AIDS plans. A report by WHO, presented at the meeting, shows that 39 percent of sexually active girls in South Africa say they have been forced to have sex. This in a country with approximately 5.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS, among the highest rates in the world, according to 2008 statistics from the joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS.
Sexual and gender violence is also widespread in East Africa, where states like Kenya have continued to record an increase in the number of sexually abused women and girls. The 2003 Kenya Demographic Health Survey (which is the latest available) indicates that 43 percent of 15- 49-year-old women reported having experienced some form of gender based violence in their lifetime, with 29 percent reporting an experience in the previous year. About 16 percent of women reported having ever been sexually assaulted, up from 13 percent in the previous year.
Statistics like those have prompted critics to ask why legislation outlawing sexual violence is failing. International and regional instruments that require signatories to address violence against women and girls have come under the spotlight.
Examples include the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979, which recognises women's right to violence-free lives; the Beijing Platform for Action adopted in 1995 that calls upon governments to take measures to address violence against women.
More recently, U.N. Security Council Declaration 1325 -- passed in 2000 -- made an urgent call to end impunity for sexual violence. In 2005, a Protocol condemning violence against women and girl children was ratified and added to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights.
It is argued that lax implementation of these instruments stems from the lack of sanctions or punitive measures against countries that fail to adhere to them.
Domestic laws that seek to address sexual violence have been criticised as lenient and overtly flawed. In Kenya and Uganda, the maximum sentence for rape is life imprisonment, but the law is silent on the minimum sentence.
Kenya's Sexual Offences Act, passed two years ago, leaves punishment to the discretion of the magistrate. Civil society groups are concerned that paves the way for magistrates to hand down sentences that would not reflect the severity of sexual offenses.
However, even as the clamor for these laws intensifies, the issue of rape within the context of marriage is even more serious. In most countries across Africa, marital rape is not acknowledged by the law as a form of sexual violence, exposing many women to HIV infection by their partners.
The WHO report presented at the Nairobi meeting indicates that increasing numbers of married women are getting infected due to their partners' behavior. The report cites three studies in India, in which more than 80 percent of HIV positive women were monogamous.
This scenario is reflected in several parts of Africa where women -- even those who know her partner is HIV positive -- are unable to practice safer sex.
"Many women are afraid to say no to sex with their spouses because they may be beaten. They cannot even ask their partners to use condoms because they will be battered or suspected to be having other affairs. In the end, they are forced to have sex without protection and may end up getting infected," Vivian Sebahire, coordinator of Solidarity Women for Development in Congo, said at the conference.
Such incidents are causing fear of increasing cases of HIV/AIDS in a country whose prevalence rate is at 4.1 percent.
What came out clearly at the conference was the fact that in most African countries, organisations working on the prevention of violence against women are not specifically addressing women's vulnerability to HIV/AIDS infection and vice versa, jeopardising effective action.
It is therefore imperative, analysts argue, that countries enact laws that recognise and specifically address sexual violence -- particularly within marriage -- in order to win the war against HIV/AIDS.
Source: Inter Press Service
