Gender
The Agenda for Accelerated Country Action for Women, Girls, Gender Equality and HIV 2010-2014 (Operational Plan) supports the implementation of the UNAIDS Action Framework: Addressing Women, Girls, Gender Equality and HIV. The Action Framework was developed in response to the pressing need to address the persistent gender inequalities and human rights violations that put women and girls at a greater risk of HIV, and increase their vulnerability. These factors also threaten the gains that have been made in preventing HIV transmission and in increasing access to antiretroviral therapy.
The UNAIDS Action Framework focuses on action in three areas, outlined below, in which UNAIDS and UNIFEM can make specific and unique contributions.
- Strengthening strategic guidance and support to national partners to 'know their epidemic and
response' in order to effectively meet the needs of women and girls. - Assisting countries to ensure that national HIV and development strategies, operational plans,
monitoring and evaluation frameworks and associated budgets address the needs and rights of
women and girls in the context of HIV. - Advocacy, capacity strengthening and mobilization of resources to deliver a comprehensive set of
measures to address the needs and rights of women and girls in the context of HIV.
Policy and Guidance Documents
UNAIDS
Women and Girls - briefing papers. 2008.
Five briefing papers resulting from a meeting between UNAIDS and the Reproductive Health and HIV Research Unit of the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. The meeting reassessed why young women and girls living in the HIV hyper-endemic countries of southern Africa are so vulnerable to HIV infection.
- Age-disparate and intergenerational sex
- Biological vulnerability
- Economic empowerment
- Education
- Gender-based violence
SADC
Draft SADC Protocol on Gender and Development. 2008
The draft Gender and Development Protocol is the result of a process that started in 2005 with the audit of SADC's Declaration on Gender and Development and its addendum on Preventing and Eradicating Gender-Based Violence.
UNAIDS/UNDP
Draft Gender Guidance for National AIDS Responses. 2008
This guidance describes objectives, recommendations and actions for more effectively addressing gender issues in national AIDS responses.
UNAIDS/UNDP
Essential Actions on Gender and AIDS. 2008
This pamphlet outlines a series of steps and processes for country-level stakeholders to accelerate and expand action on gender equality in order to strengthen national responses to AIDS. It emphasizes the importance of setting gender and AIDS programme priorities and stresses that these priorities will vary according to the configuration of a country's epidemic and its local contexts.
UNAIDS
Report on progress on UN Secretary General's Task Force on Women. Recommendations for Women and Girls in Southern Africa. 2007
This document presents the findings of a review of progress in strengthening national AIDS programmes for women and girls in the nine countries that participated in the United Nations Secretary-General's Task Force on Women, Girls and HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa in 2003. The countries involved included: Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe
The Global Coalition on Women and AIDS
Keeping the Promise: An Agenda for Action on Women and AIDS. 2006
To be more effective, AIDS responses must address the factors that continue to put women at risk. The world's governments have repeatedly declared their commitment to improve the status of women and acknowledged the linkage with HIV. In some areas, progress has been made. By and large, though, efforts have been small-scale, half-hearted and haphazard. Major opportunities to stem the global AIDS epidemic have been missed. It is time the world's leaders lived up to their promises. That's why the UNAIDS-led Global Coalition on Women and AIDS is calling for a massive scaling up of AIDS responses for women and girls.
The Global Coalition on Women and AIDS
Progress Report. 2006
This document calls on national governments and the international community to secure women's rights, invest more money in AIDS programmes that work for women and allocate more seats at decision-making tables to women.
Global Task Force on Women, Girls and HIV/AIDS
Facing the Future Together. Report of the Secretary General's Task Force on Women, Girls and HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa. 2004
This report outlines the changes required of Governments in enacting legislation and developing policy and programme guidance areas in which the United Nations has significant expertise. Yet there is also a need for a real shift in how women are perceived and treated. Without normative social change, we are warned, laws and policies will have limited impact.
UNAIDS, UNIFEM, UNFPA
Women and AIDS: Confronting the Crisis. 2004
This report grows out of the shared belief that the world must respond to the HIV crisis confronting women.It highlights the work of the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS-a UNAIDS initiative that supports and energizes programmes that mitigate the impact of AIDS on girls and women worldwide. Through its advocacy and networking, the Coalition is drawing greater attention to the effects of HIV on women and stimulating concrete, effective action by an ever-increasing range of partners. This report, with its straightforward analysis and practical responses, can be a valuable advocacy and policy tool for addressing this complex challenge
Gender Project and the University of Pretoria's AIDS Human Rights Researcy Unit
Assessing the integration of gender and human rights in HIV-related documents and processes in selected Southern African countries. 2009
This report presents the findings of a desk study undertaken to assess the integration of gender and human rights in HIV-related documents and processes in Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. It highlights best practices, lessons learned, and areas for future action.
Women Won't Wait Coalition
Show us the Money: Is Violence Against Women on the HIV/AIDS Funding Agenda? 2007
This report analyses the policies, programming and funding patterns of the four largest public donors to HIV&AIDS: the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR/US), the UK Department for International Development (DFID), and the World Bank, and UNAIDS. The report is the first step in an effort by this coalition to monitor the policies, programmes, and funding streams of international agencies and national governments, and to hold these agencies accountable to basic health and human rights objectives.
IOM
Breaking the Cycle of Vulnerability. Responding to the Health Needs of Trafficked Women in East &
Southern Africa. 2006
This is the first study in East and Southern Africa to focus specifically on the links between trafficking of women and sexual, reproductive and mental health (SRMH). With regard to health, special attention is paid to HIV since all countries in ESA are experiencing generalised HIV epidemics (with the exception of the Indian Ocean Island States).
UNAIDS, The Global Coalition Against Women
Violence Against Women and Girls in the Era of HIV/AIDS. A Situation and Response Analysis in Kenya.
2006
This report presents the situation and response to violence against women and girls in the context of AIDS in Kenya. It argues that to address HIV and AIDS in girls and women, violence against women and girls must be also addressed. In this respect it aims to highlight the connections between violence against girls and women and risk of HIV infection and to assess the situation and existing responses. It is intended that this report will be a basis for scaling up national action that will make a difference in the lives of girls and women.
Inter-Agency Standing Committee
Guidelines for Gender Based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Settings. 2005
This report aims to enable humanitarian actors and communities to plan, establish and coordinate a set of minimum multisectoral interventions to prevent and respond to sexual violence during the early phase of an emergency. The guidelines inform and sensitise the humanitarian community to the existence of GBV during emergencies where it is a serious and life threatening protection issue, and offer concrete strategies for including GBV interventions and considerations in emergency preparedness planning and during more stabilised phases of emergencies.
Françoise Nduwimana
The Right to Survive Sexual Violence. Women and HIV/AIDS. 2004
Rights & Democracy's Women's Rights Programme made the decision to fund and publish this study in response to the Special Rapporteur's appeal for more research on the subject and the need expressed by the Coalition for Women's Human Rights in Conflict Situations to better respond to the unparalleled situation experienced by women who were raped and infected with HIV/AIDS during the Rwandan genocide. This essay is divided into two parts. The first part discusses the specific case of the Rwandan genocide and the second, the armed conflicts plaguing sub-Saharan Africa.
CADRE
Gender-based Violence and HIV/AIDS in South Africa: a Literature Review. The Global Coalition on Women and AIDS. 2003
This literature review identifies research, knowledge, resource and service gaps, so as to open up the terrain for further research, debate, and information-gathering with a view to feeding into the formation of explanatory models, into education, media, health communications, policy and service-delivery.
Human Rights Watch
Double Standards: Women's Property Rights Violations in Kenya. 2003
Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, women's rights to own, inherit, and control property are under constant attack from discriminatory laws and customs. These violations perpetuate women's inequality, undermine the fight against HIV/AIDS, and doom development efforts. This report documents women's property rights abuses in Kenya, where the raging HIV/AIDS epidemic magnifies the devastation of property rights violations.
International Coalition for the Rights of Women (ICRW)
Addressing HIV-Related Stigma and Resulting Discrimination in Africa: A Three-Country Study in
Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zambia. 2002
This research update is based on preliminary analysis of data collected since August 2001 from three African countries: Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zambia. The ICRW is leading this research initiative to investigate the causes, manifestations, and consequences of HIV/AIDS-related stigma and subsequent discriminatory acts. This research update is the first in a continuing series.
Human Rights Watch
Suffering in Silence: The Links between Human Rights Abuses and HIV Transmission to Girls in Zambia. 2002
In Zambia, as in other countries in the region, tens of thousands of girls-many orphaned by AIDS or otherwise without parental care-suffer in silence as the government fails to provide basic protections from sexual assault that would lessen their vulnerability to HIV/AIDS. Through girls' own testimonies, this report shows sexual assault of girls in Zambia in the era of HIV/AIDS to be widespread and complex.
ICRW/Population Services International/AIDSMark Project
Cross-generational and Transactional Sexual Relations in Sub-Saharan Africa: Prevalence of Behaviour and Implications for Negotiating Safer Sexual Practices. 2002
This literature review assesses the extent of sexual relations between adolescent girls and older male partners (cross-generational sex) in sub-Saharan Africa, the extent of transactional sex, and the behavioral dynamics of girls and men involved in these sexual relations. The underlying assumption is supported by empirical study. The study intends to increase understanding of the dynamics and risks involved in these relationships and to apply lessons to programme development.
T. Keene
Stopping The Spread of AIDS among Women in Sub-Saharan Africa, What Works and What does not: A Comparative Study of Uganda and Botswana. 2001
Using feminist theory and comparative analysis, this thesis investigates why women in sub-Saharan Africa are more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS than men. Through two case studies -- one on Uganda where the HIV prevalence rate has dropped considerably in recent years, and one on Botswana, where the HIV prevalence rate has drastically increased in recent years - this document focuses on women's vulnerability to HIV, how vulnerability can be counteracted, and how these counteractive efforts are implemented by women and state government
Articles
S.C. Kalichman, L.C. Simbayi, M. Kaufman, D.C. Cain, Chauncey, S. Jooste, and V. Mathiti Gender attitudes, sexual violence, and HIV/AIDS risks among men and women in Cape Town, South Africa. Journal of Sex Research. 2005
This study examined socially-constructed gender roles at the individual level among men and women receiving STI clinic services in Cape Town, South Africa, specifically gender attitudes and sexual-violence supportive beliefs.
Article can be accessed at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2372/is_4_42/ai_n15929174
K.N. Otwombe, P. Ndindi, C. Ajema, and J. Wanyungu
Using VCT statistics from Kenya in understanding the association between gender and HIV. Journal of Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS. 2007
This paper demonstrates the importance of utilising official statistics from the voluntary counselling and testing centres (VCT) to determine the association between gender and HIV infection rates in Kenya. The study design adopted was a record based survey of data collected from VCT sites in Kenya. Of those who were tested, significantly more females tested positive and had twice as high a chance of being infected by HIV than males. The paper concludes that VCT statistics may lead to better planning of services and gender sensitive interventions if utilized well.
J.C. Kim and C. Watts
Gaining a foothold: Tackling poverty, gender inequality and HIV/AIDS in Africa. British Medical Journal, 331:769-772. 2005
This paper examines poverty and social structures that may keep many women in Africa from protecting themselves from HIV/ The article can be accessed at http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/331/7519/769
J. Bongaarts
Late marriage and the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. Population Council. 2006
This study assesses the potential roles of late age at marriage and a long period of premarital sexual activity as population risk factors for HIV infection in the sub-Saharan Africa region. The relationship between marital status and the prevalence and incidence of HIV is examined with ecological data from 33 sub-Saharan African countries and with individual-level data from nationally representative Demographic and Health Surveys in Kenya and Ghana in 2003. Significant positive correlation is found between HIV prevalence and the median age at first marriage, and between HIV prevalence and the interval between first sex and first marriage. In the individual-level analysis, the risk for HIV infection per year of exposure among sexually active women is higher before than after first marriage. These findings support the hypothesis that a high average age at marriage in a population leads to a long period of premarital sex during which partner changes are relatively common, thus facilitating the spread of HIV.
V. M.G. Von Struensee
Widows, AIDS, Health and Human Rights in Africa. Social Science Research Network (SSRN). 2004
Widowsin Tanzania, as in many other parts of the world, face discrimination on a regular basis. Such discrimination commonly destroys a woman's ability to live a life outside of poverty. This article addresses the importance of changing the customary legal rules relating to widows.
Article can be accessed on-line at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=569665
Websites
The Global Coalition on Women and AIDS
http://womenandaids.unaids.org/