Aids drive fails women

Many women are at the mercy of their menfolk

As the Joint UN Programme on HIV and Aids prepares to reveal new analysis on the impact of the global Aids epidemic on women and girls, the Executive Director of UNAids, Dr Peter Piot, and Emma Thompson, the actress and campaigner, write about a disturbing trend:

Mrs Akinyi's husband died of Aids in 1990. She believes her husband infected her with HIV - he had a history of extramarital affairs.

When he died, her in-laws denied her property inheritance: in her words: "Immediately after the burial I was chased away from home with my children."

Mrs Nyakumabor's husband died of Aids in 1998 and left her HIV-positive with five children.

Millions of women around the world were already facing a lifetime of hard labour. Aids has turned it into a death sentence

Her in-laws grabbed household items and took over the house and land she had helped pay for.

Soon after her husband's death, Mrs Nyakumabor's father-in-law called a family meeting, told her to choose an inheritor and ordered her to be cleansed by having sex with a fisherman.

Mrs Nyakumabor refused, causing an uproar. She now struggles to meet her family's needs and her slum landlord has threatened to evict her because she cannot always pay rent on time.

These women's stories - their names have been changed - are two of the hundreds collected by Human Rights Watch and other organisations documenting the stripping of property rights in the wake of Aids among some of the most vulnerable people on earth.

Unwilling partners

The global fight against Aids has been endorsed by all the UN member states and declared a high priority at countless summits.

Resources are being mobilised - still short of what is needed but a lot more than was available only a few years ago.

But for as long as women and girls are unable to enjoy education, property rights, freedom from violence and economic security, progress on treatment and prevention will pass them by.

Women make up about half the global HIV epidemic and in Africa, the figure is even higher.

The "ABC" slogan - Abstain, Be faithful, use a Condom - is the mainstay of many HIV prevention programmes.

The impact of Aids on the hardest-hit countries

At-a-glance

But for too many women and girls, this message has no purchase.

Where sexual violence is widespread, abstention or insisting on condom use is not a realistic option.

Across the world, between one fifth and a half of all girls and young women report that their first sexual encounter was forced. Only 11% of women in Zambia believed they had the right to ask a husband to use a condom.

Lethal ignorance

Nor does marriage provide the answer. The reality across the developing world is that the majority of women will be married by 20 and have higher rates of HIV than their unmarried, sexually active peers.

At the same time, women bear a disproportionate share of the burden of Aids care.

The knock-on effects of the plunge in household income caused by Aids is often to pull children out of school - and girls are the first to go. Across Africa, formal school participation is declining.

The answers to reducing women's vulnerability to Aids clearly lie deeper than the use of slogans.

To address Aids effectively, we first have to understand how women are being treated and why.

A comprehensive strategy is needed

• to boost girls' access to education - particularly secondary education

• to strengthen legal protection for women's property and inheritance rights

• eradicate violence against women and girls

• ensure they have fair access to HIV care and prevention services

Tackling these inequalities is not just a matter for women - men must be fully involved. For starters, they need to declare zero tolerance for violence against women, be committed to their daughters' education and help alleviate the burden of care.

Moves are under way - for example the global push to achieve education for all, or the campaign by the World Health Organisation and UNAids to ensure that three million people in the developing world have access to HIV treatment by 2005 - and that half are women. But more is needed, and more urgently.

New campaign

To that end, UNAids has pulled together a high-profile group of men and women - the Global Coalition on Women and Aids - which gathers activists, government representatives, celebrities and community workers who are committed to improving the lives of women and girls.

The call to empower women is not new but Aids makes it more urgent.

Millions of women around the world were already facing a lifetime of hard labour. Aids has turned it into a death sentence.

The skills, knowledge and resources to relieve women of the devastating burden of Aids already exist. What is needed now is the political will to see that they are applied.