Women Won't Wait Statement to the G8

WWW CALL ON G8 TO KEEP YOUR PROMISE TO WOMEN AND GIRLS
JUNE 2008

In recognition of the growing feminization of the AIDS epidemic, in 2007 leaders of the world's wealthiest countries pledged to support a gender-sensitive response to HIV and AIDS as well as “additional concerted efforts to stop sexual exploitation and gender-based violence”.

Despite this, gender-based violence continues to be treated as an "add-on" and is rarely highlighted as a major driver and consequence of the disease. This is compounded by the fact that violence against women and girls is not measured statistically to contribute to the evidence
base linking the two human rights crises.

Meanwhile, levels of funding for addressing women's rights in the context of HIV & AIDS remain minimal.

Considering the urgency of this crisis, we urge the G8 to follow through on commitments made at Heiligendamm in 2007 to:

• ensure that greater attention and appropriate resources are allocated by the Global Fund to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care that address the needs of women and girls;
• contribute substantially with other donors to work towards the goal of providing universal coverage of PMTCT programs by 2010;
• scale up efforts to reduce the gaps in the area of maternal and child health care and voluntary family planning;
• take concrete steps to support comprehensive education programs, especially for girls,to promote knowledge about sexuality and reproductive health and the prevention of sexually transmitted infections;
• support the national level inclusion of comprehensive HIV/AIDS-related information and life-skills information in school curricula; and
• work to support additional concerted efforts to stop sexual and other forms of exploitation and gender-based violence.

In addition, we look forward to the governments of the G8 countries underscoring their commitment to ending violence against women and stemming the HIV pandemic through the following mechanisms:

• Reaffirm strongly the agreed goal to provide universal access to HIV prevention,treatment and care by 2010. This G8 must agree a funding plan for universal access based on fair share contributions and clearly lay out who will pay how much of the $60 billion promised last year. Additionally the G8 must set up a mechanism to monitor,evaluate and report back on progress made on all previous G8 commitments.

• Urge the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM) and other agencies to make concrete policy and financial commitments to specifically address the intersection of violence against women and girls and HIV&AIDS. The Global Fund has taken some initial steps to strengthen a “gender-sensitive response”, however, it must provide clear definition of what is meant by a gender sensitive response as well as clear guidance and examples. Additionally it should clearly define specific efforts to address the intersection of violence against women and HIV.

• Allocate funding to UNAIDS to meet and expand their initial resource estimates to address gender inequality and violence against women and girls. The costing of such interventions mark the first steps to address violence against women and HIV, yet they are currently limited to prevention intervention, and the amounts are minimal and insufficient. A vastly increased commitment of resources is required if gender equality and the prevention of violence against women and girls is to be a core element of the AIDS response especially in countries where women and girls make up the overwhelming majority of those infected.

• Establish concrete targets on the elimination of violence against women and girls as a part of the Universal Access process. Such steps will require first and foremost increased funding to collect baseline data on the extent, nature, and drivers of violence against women in specific settings, and to provide ample and flexible funding to address these factors.

• Make ending all forms of violence against women and girls a central aspect of all bilateral and multilateral strategies including but not limited to HIV programs. This includes, among other things, establishing systemic and human rights approaches to legal reforms, efforts to end child marriage, educate girls, establish women’s property and inheritance rights and their financial and legal security in situations of divorce or widowhood, ensure equal access to education and employment opportunities, dramatically increase funding for programs to change social and cultural norms that support violence against women, increasing women’s ability to negotiate safer sex, and also increasing their immediate access to essential services. We also advocate for a shift in focus from targeted interventions to interventions with vulnerable populations. Targeted interventions are looking at drivers in the epidemic and we need a focus from that to persons vulnerable to the virus and their needs.

• Increase current funding for programmes to prevent and redress violence against women and girls within AIDS funding per year, in addition to broader and increased investment in sexual and reproductive health and rights; and to promote empowerment and human rights of women and girls as an integral and indivisible part of any AIDS response, whether these be focused on prevention, treatment, or care.

• Develop specific means for measuring work that addresses violence against women and girls in HIV budgets, action plans, programming and monitoring and evaluation processes. This will allow the G8 to track, monitor and evaluate the extent and impact of such integrated programming. HIV/AIDS programming plans, funding proposals and funding reports must contain a line or section for work on violence against women and girls. To avoid over-burdening countries with reporting requirements, this can be done in coordination with UNAIDS and other agencies working on violence against women and AIDS.

• Ensure that the voices and experience of people living with HIV&AIDS – especially women and girls whose voices are too often silenced – are given prominent position in designing and scaling up the global AIDS response. Women’s groups and advocates should have a seat at the table when it comes to devising global, national and local AIDS strategies. Furthermore, within the participation of women and girls living with HIV&AIDS (and indeed relevant to the participation of any other groups), it is important to acknowledge the diversity of this group and to ensure that participation encompasses not only the easiest to reach or those with the strongest voice within this group, but that it includes a cross-section of women and girls living with HIV&AIDS, including those from marginalized groups.

• Support countries to strengthen the health and legal sector responses to violence and all human rights violations related to HIV&AIDS including but not limited to violence, stigma, and discrimination. All prevention, treatment and care programs should include relevant programmatic responses to violence against women and girls, and all health care workers doing direct delivery should be trained in screening and referral for violence and abuse.

• Direct donors to support programs and services to prevent violence and to support survivors of violence. This includes integrating such programmes within HIV&AIDS and sexual and reproductive health programmes such as:
  • Training of health care and service providers (with particular attention to those providing PMTCT, given the increased risk of intimate partner violence pregnant women face) to recognize and respond to the signs and symptoms of violence as a routine part of HIV&AIDS testing, treatment, care and support.
  • Education programs about and the provision of post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) and emergency contraception to survivors of sexual violence.
  • Distribution of female controlled prevention methods, including the distribution of the female condom to women, men and transgender people.
  • Anti-violence education programmes operating in all communities where gender-based violence occurs.

• Support the strengthening of the UN system’s capacity to work for women, including through providing funding and other assistance for a new UN women’s entity. This entity should have a higher status than current UN women’s organizations have, with adequate and predictable resources, and with strong leadership, in order to better position the UN to address the twin pandemics of violence against women and HIV&AIDS.

Women Won’t Wait seeks to accelerate effective responses to the linkages of violence against all women and girls and the spread of HIV by tracking and, where necessary, calling for changes in the policies, programming and funding streams of national governments and international multilateral and bilateral donor and technical agencies. For more information about the Women Won’t Wait campaign, please contact: info@womenwontwait.org

Members of the “Women Won’t Wait – End HIV and Violence Against Women. Now.” campaign:
Action Aid; African Women’s Development and Communications Network (FEMNET); Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID); Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL); Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE); Fundación para Estudio e Investigación de la Mujer (FEIM); GESTOS-Soropositividade, Comunicação & Gênero; International Community of Women Living with HIV&AIDS Southern Africa (ICW-Southern Africa); International Women’s AIDS Caucus; International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC); Latin American and Caribbean Women’s Health Network; Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA); Program on International Health and Human Rights, Harvard School of Public Health; SANGRAM; VAMP; and Women and Law in Southern Africa (WLSA).