*EPF210 11/16/2004
Women's Vulnerability to AIDS Key Element in UNAIDS Agenda
(Coalition adopts initiatives to help women protect themselves) (840)

By Emily Harter
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Social and economic gender inequalities in African cultures dominated by men leave women increasingly vulnerable to HIV, Dr. Kathleen Cravero, deputy director of the Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), told a conference at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars November 10.

"Today 60 percent of all people in sub-Saharan Africa with HIV/AIDS are women," Cravero explained. In South Africa girls make up 75 percent of those infected with HIV, while in Kenya, there are 45 young women with the virus for every 10 young men with HIV.

"Getting HIV from older boyfriends, or unfaithful husbands, or through forced marriages all stem from one stark reality: that women lack control over their bodies and their daily lives, and lack the tools, resources and support they need to change their situations," Cravero stated.

"If we don't expand our concept of what prevention means and make our strategies more relevant for women and girls, time, energy and countless lives will be lost," she declared.

The U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID's) assistant administrator for global health, Dr. Anne Peterson, came to understand the issue of female vulnerability during her time in Kenya in the 1980s when women would knock on her door and ask what they could do to protect themselves from their husbands.

The husbands had just come back from Nairobi and the women knew they had been with prostitutes and might have contracted the AIDS virus, she said, but the wives were powerless to protect themselves physically, socially or legally.

Young schoolgirls, she explained, also were at the mercy of men if they wanted to pass their school exams. In both situations women could do very little to protect themselves.

"If women had more options, the option to choose marriage rather than have it be forced upon them, to decide when and with whom they have sex, to negotiate condom use with their partners, to live their lives free from violence and to earn incomes adequate to feed their families, then their ability to protect themselves from HIV might be real," Dr. Cravero said.

Current AIDS initiatives do not address the vulnerability of women within traditional African societies and thus are not working, she said. "Conventional prevention strategies are leaving generations of women in jeopardy. What we call the ABC [Abstain, Be Faithful, Use Condoms] method of prevention is a good start, but it is not enough."

Conventional methods of AIDS prevention ignore the social realities in many African countries, Cravero explained. "We tell women to be faithful to their partners, but we know that their partners are unfaithful to them. We tell women to use condoms but we know that their partners will often refuse.

"If we are going to help protect women, and help them protect themselves, we have to acknowledge and act on the realities in which they live," she said. A UNAIDS coalition, the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS, was launched 10 months ago to turn the fight in that direction.

The calition is an informal group of 10 partners whose goal is to diminish the impact of AIDS on women and girls worldwide. It acknowledges that the ABC prevention methods are not enough, and has designed a new program called ABC Plus that tailors its agenda to deal with gender inequalities characteristic of many African countries and make women more autonomous in family and community life.

In addressing the five key issues for women -- domestic violence, property rights, access to health care, female-controlled HIV prevention methods and access to education -- the coalition is working to pass laws that make rape and domestic violence serious crimes, protect women's property rights, and provide access to free legal aid.

It is also seeking partners to increase funding for microbicide research, as well as distribution of female condoms, and to eliminate school fees worldwide so that schools are more accessible to and safer for girls.

According to Cravero, removing the threat of domestic violence is a very important factor in women's gaining control over their bodies. "Women who live in fear for their lives or the well-being of their children are in no position to negotiate anything, much less condom use," she said. "Protecting property and inheritance rights of women reduces their need to engage in risky behaviors to meet their basic needs" and gives them more autonomy and power to make decisions, she added.

Until these changes are enacted, Cravero said, women need to have other means to protect themselves, hence the need for female condoms and for investment in microbicides. "For women who can't choose when and with whom to have sex, for women whose partners will not use condoms or be faithful, and for women who are too beaten up or beaten down even to ask, methods they control, especially methods that do not require partner cooperation, will make all the difference."

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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