PHA-Exchange> Secretary-General Kofi Annan International Women's Day Speech

[Aviva]

>The Secretary-General hails heroic women leading the fight
>in HIV/AIDS epidemic, says their further empowerment is key
>to the global response....following is Secretary-General
>Kofi Annan's message on International Women's Day, which is
>observed 8 March:
>
>******************
>
>As we mark this year's International Women's Day, we look at
>the devastating toll the global HIV/AIDS epidemic is taking
>on women, and the critical role of women in fighting AIDS.
>
>At the beginning, many people thought of AIDS as a disease
>striking mainly at men. Even a decade ago, statistics
>indicated that women were less affected. But a terrifying
>pattern has since emerged. All over the world, women are
>increasingly bearing the brunt of the epidemic. Today, in
>sub-Saharan Africa, more than half of all adults living with
>HIV/AIDS are women. Infection rates in young African women
>are far higher than in young men. In the world as a whole,
>at least half of those newly infected are women, and among
>people younger than 24, girls and young women now make up
>nearly two thirds of those living with HIV. If these rates
>of infection
>
>continue, women will soon become the majority of the global
>total of people infected.
>
>As AIDS strikes at the lifeline of society that women
>represent, a vicious cycle develops. Poor women are becoming
>even less economically secure as a result of AIDS, often
>deprived of rights to housing, property or inheritance or
>even adequate health services. In rural areas, AIDS has
>caused the collapse of coping systems that for centuries
>have helped women to feed their families during times of
>drought and famine -- leading in turn to family break-ups,
>migration, and yet greater risk of HIV infection. As AIDS
>forces girls to drop out of school -- whether they are
>forced to take care of a sick relative, run the household,
>or help support the family -- they
>
>fall deeper into poverty. Their own children in turn are
>less likely to attend school -- and more likely to become
>infected. Thus, society pays many times over the deadly
>price of the impact on women of AIDS.
>
>Why, then, are women -- usually not the ones with the most
>sexual partners outside marriage, or more likely than men to
>be injecting drug users -- more vulnerable to infection?
>Usually, because society's inequalities puts them at risk.
>There are many factors, including poverty, abuse and
>violence, lack of information, coercion by older men, and
>men having several partners. That is why many mainstream
>prevention strategies are untenable, for example those based
>exclusively on the 'ABC' approach -- "abstain, be faithful,
>use a condom". Where sexual violence is widespread,
>abstinence or insisting on condom use is not a realistic
>option for women and girls. Nor does marriage always provide
>the answer. In many parts of the developing world, the
>
>majority of women will be married by age 20, and have higher
>rates of HIV than their unmarried, sexually active peers --
>often because their husbands have several partners.
>
>What is needed is positive, concrete change that will give
>more power and confidence to women and girls, and transform
>relations between women and men at all levels of society.
>
>Change that will strengthen legal protection of women's
>property and inheritance rights, and ensure they have full
>access to prevention options -- including microbicides and
>female condoms.
>
>Change that makes men assume their responsibility -- whether
>ensuring their daughters get an education; abstaining from
>sexual behaviour that puts others at risk; forgoing
>relations with girls and very young women; or understanding
>that when it comes to violence against women, there are no
>grounds for tolerance and no tolerable excuses.
>
>That is why, last month, UNAIDS launched a Global Coalition
>on Women and AIDS as an effort to ensure that the
>empowerment of women is at the center of the response, and
>to build on the critical role that women already play in the
>fight against HIV/AIDS worldwide. In most countries and
>communities I have visited around the world, it is women who
>have been the most active
>
>and effective advocates and activists in the fight against
>AIDS. Everywhere that the epidemic is taking a severe toll,
>there are heroic women's groups and cooperatives doing
>remarkable work on prevention and care. Supporting these
>women, and encouraging others to follow their example, must
>be our strategy for the future. It is among them that the
>real heroes of this war are to be found. It is our job to
>furnish them with strength, resources and hope.