HEALTH-RIGHTS: UN Agency Sees Gender Concerns as Key in Fight Against Aids.

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

MEXICO CITY, Mar 8 2001 (IPS) - While a number of developing countries such as India, Senegal, South Africa and Mexico have been commended for taking some steps to protect girls and women from succumbing to the killer disease AIDS, such actions were more the exception that the rule, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) has lamented.

What is required, states UNIFEM, are more widespread efforts through public policy. ôPartnerships between women’s rights activists, HIV advocates and policy makers provide a basis for action and information to empower women to take appropriate decisions about the disease,ö observes this UN agency in a note, ôGender and HIV-AIDS.ö

In India, for instance, public health officials and organisations working to stall the spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) have been disseminating information ômore effectivelyö to vulnerable women, while in Senegal, there has been an effort to ôinclude a component on sex education in the school curriculum.ö

And in Mexico, public health officials have begun to use the findings of a study on the links between gender relations and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS to ôre-consider distribution policiesö of anti-AIDS drugs to women, particularly those working in the informal economy in this country.

These initiatives were described in a background note released by UNIFEM this week as it teamed up with four UN agencies and women’s rights activists to drive home that point during the 45th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), being held at UN headquarters in New York from Mar. 6-16.

One aim of the session will be to underscore the need for public policies to consider the global epidemic in a broader manner than what tends to prevail, as simply a health issue. ôThere is a need for policy makers to be sensitive to the gender component in the spread of HIV,ö says Nazneen Damji, a UNIFEM spokeswoman.

Geeta Rao Gupta makes a similar case too, in light of a number of governments across the developing world having ôfallen shortö of enacting sound laws to help women face the ravages of AIDS.

ôThose (governments) who have done so have not put the laws into practice and often they see it only as a health issue, not one of women’s rights,ö adds Gupta, president of the Washington D.C.-based International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW).

Such thinking comes in the wake of the conclusions reached at a meeting of international experts last November in Windhoek, Namibia. The experts called on governments to ôaddress the seriousness of HIV-AIDS pandemic and its gender dimensions.ö

The need for such a shift in focus was necessary, they added, given that women and girls currently bore a ôheavier burden than men when it comes to HIV infectionö and that gender inequalities limit women’s access to ôHIV-AIDS treatment, care and support, including anti-retroviral therapies.ö

For UNIFEM, while the disease is a health issues, ôthe epidemic is not.ö It argues, furthermore, that there is a need to understand ôhow values and traditions often prevent women and girls from saying No!’ to unwanted and unprotected sex and being heard.ö

The World Health Organisation (WHO) feels the same way too, pointing out that the ôsocialö and ôculturalö factors cannot be ignored, since, for instance, women in some countries are ônot expected to discuss or make decisions about sexuality.ö

Moreover, adds this Geneva-based UN health agency, women ôcannot request, let alone insist on using a condom or any form of protection. If they refuse sex or request condom use, they often risk abuse, as there is a suspicion of infidelity.ö

And what lends credence to such concerns are the numbing details about the way in which HIV-AIDS has impacted women across the world. In its ôReport on the Global Epidemic,ö released last year, the Joint UN Programme on HIV-AIDS (UNAIDS) revealed that of the 34.7 million adults living with HIV-AIDS, close to 47 percent, or 16.4 million, were women.

Furthermore, it added, that 52 percent, or 1.3 million, of the people who died last year due to AIDS were women, thus increasing the total of women who have died of HIV-AIDS-related illnesses since the epidemic began to over nine million.

In sub-Saharan Africa, which is the hardest hit region, being home to about 70 percent of adults and 80 percent of children living with HIV, the infection rate among women and girls is equally severe. ôClose to 55 percent of all HIV positive adults in sub-Saharan Africa are women, (while) teenage girls are infected at a rate of five to six times greater than their male counterparts,ö revealed UNAIDS.

According to the WHO, the AIDS epidemic in women is overwhelmingly heterosexual, ôalmost entirely so in Africa and South and South East Asia.ö

In other regions, though, a number of women have been infected through sex with a bisexual partner or one who injects drugs, their own injecting of drugs or blood transfusions in developing countries where blood is not routinely screened, it adds.

But for such women to receive care, more gender-sensitive public policies and programmes are necessary, states Stephanie Urdang, UNIFEM’s advisor on Gender and HIV-AIDS.

ôUnless gender inequality, which rests on power relations is specifically addressed in every strategy, policy and programme that is undertaken, from the global and government level to the community and family level, our efforts to reverse the epidemic will be stalled,ö she pointed out last month in a statement to the committee preparing for the UN’s special session of the General Assembly on HIV-AIDS, to be held in June this year.

If gender equality in HIV-AIDS policies are ignored, she added, the consequences would be ôfatal.”