PHA-Exchange> RIGHTS: A Ghastly Disease Feeds Off a Ghastlier Oppression

[Claudio]

From: "Vern Weitzel" <vern at coombs.anu.edu.au>

> http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34470
>
> RIGHTS: A Ghastly Disease Feeds Off a Ghastlier Oppression
> Stephen Leahy
>
> TORONTO, Canada, Aug 25 (IPS) - Gender inequality has become the main 
> driver of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, especially in Africa, where 70 percent of 
> those infected are women.
>
> A new powerful international agency for women is needed to turn this 
> situation around and address the growing problem of violence against girls 
> and women, experts and advocates say.
>
> Stephen Lewis, the U.N. special envoy for AIDS in Africa, agreed. "We will 
> never subdue the gruesome force of AIDS until the rights of women become 
> paramount in the struggle," he said at the conference. "It's a ghastly, 
> deadly business, this oppression of women in so many countries on the 
> planet."
>
> The United Nations estimates that up to three million women lose their 
> lives to gender-based violence and four million are sold into prostitution 
> each year, while two million suffer genital mutilation. One woman in five 
> is a victim of rape or attempted rape.
>
> Women also make up the vast majority of illiterates in the world due to 
> lack of educational opportunities.
>
> To aggressively tackle these issues, Lewis has appealed to the United 
> Nations to create an international agency to advocate for the rights of 
> women, similar to UNICEF. The proposed agency would have a billion-dollar 
> budget, employ thousands of staff and have widespread operational capacity 
> on the ground where it is needed.
>
> Women do not earn cash salaries and are not permitted to own land or open 
> bank accounts in many parts of the world, leaving them powerless and poor.
>
HIV/AIDS cannot be
> effectively addressed without getting at the root causes of poverty and 
> inequality.
>
> HIV/AIDS prevention programmes will be ineffective without programmes to 
> reduce violence against women, especially young women. These issues are 
> not just African but apply to Southeast Asia and Latin America.
>
> The U.N. currently has a small agency for women called UNIFEM -- the 
> United Nations Fund for Women -- but with a relatively scant 
> 40-million-dollar budget, limited mandate and few in-country staff, it is 
> far from what is needed.
>
> So where is the money going to come from for a U.N. women's agency? Global 
> foreign aid is more than 100 billion dollars and is expected to reach an 
> estimated 130 billion by 2010, Lewis told the High-Level Panel on U.N. 
> Reform this summer.
>
> "Is more than half the world's population not entitled to one percent of 
> the total?" he asked.
>
> The panel is charged with making recommendations regarding the reform of 
> the U.N. and could recommend that the U.N. General Assembly create this 
> new agency.
>
> But it is far from certain the U.N. will create a strong and effective 
> agency for women, Lewis readily admits. He urged those attending the 
> Toronto conference in his final speech as U.N. envoy to "enter the fray 
> against gender inequality."