Zero Tolerance: Stop the Violence Against Women and
Children
Worldwide, violence against women and children is playing a
critical role in driving the spread of HIV/AIDS. Released on August
1, 2006, GAA's Zero Tolerance advocacy brief outlines a
comprehensive framework for addressing the epidemic of violence,
including increased funding commitments from donor and affected
country governments and multilateral institutions.
PDF file of Zero Tolerance
MS Word file of Zero
Tolerance
To request hard copies of GAA's Zero Tolerance advocacy brief,
please contact Lisa Schechtman at lschechtman@globalaidsalliance.org.
I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
There are now approximately 18 million women in the world living
with HIV/AIDS, a large portion of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa.
2.3 million children under the age of 15 are living with HIV/AIDS;
one of them dies each minute. As the international community
attempts to grapple with these staggering numbers and spends
billions of dollars on essential HIV/AIDS programs, comparatively
little attention is being paid to the urgent need to scale up
programs that address violence against women and children (VAWC).
Establishing zero tolerance for violence is matter of basic
respect for human rights, particularly those of women, including
sexual and reproductive rights. Unless it is fully addressed with a
holistic view of risk factors and consequences, the multi-billion
dollar response to HIV/AIDS is bound to fail.
Violence is clearly at epidemic proportions, and it severely
impacts children, with 20% of girls and another 10% of boys
experiencing sexual abuse as a child. Orphans and other vulnerable
children (OVC) are at heightened risk. Refugees and displaced
persons, 80% of whom are women and children, also experience
increased sexual or physical violence; this makes approximately 15
million people especially vulnerable.
Violence is linked to HIV. Women who have experienced violence
may be up to three times more likely to acquire HIV. In addition to
behavioral risk factors, there are direct consequences of
unprotected forced or coerced sex, and this is compounded by global
HIV/AIDS policies that fail to take seriously the realities facing
women and girls. Fear of violence can prevent women from seeking
VCT, disclosing their serostatus, and receiving treatment when it is
needed.
Many of the kinds of violence addressed in this paper have deep
social roots. For instance, polls show that in some countries large
majorities of men and women feel men are sometimes justified in
beating their wives. These and similar views are based in
traditional concepts of gender roles, which can be reinforced via
religious institutions, the media and other mechanisms. However,
there are strong examples of ways in which violence against women
and children can be effectively addressed. For example:
• In rural South Africa, the IMAGE project combined microfinance
lending with participatory gender and HIV training. The program
involved over 850 women and 4,000 young people. After 2 years, risk
of past-year intimate partner violence was reduced by more than
half.
• In Egypt, NGOs have implemented the New Visions educational
program, which has reached 17,000 young men and boys. Among boys who
have graduated from the program, only 26% now feel it is acceptable
for a husband to hit his wife, a decline of about half.
For more than two decades, women’s advocacy organizations have
been calling for action on violence against women. The call for
action to stop violence against children is more recent but is
beginning to be heard. Yet, despite clear evidence that successful
strategies exist, international donor countries have been far too
slow to react, multilateral funding mechanisms have been left
starved of resources, and no global plan has been created. For
instance, in 2005 the United States announced an initiative to
support legal and judicial reforms and improve social protection
mechanisms in four African countries, but it has taken more than a
year to get off the ground. The UNIFEM Trust Fund to Eliminate
Violence Against Women (TF) has provided only $10 million to
programs in 100 countries and faces a resource gap of at least $14
million each year. Countries with high rates of violence against
women and children, many of which also have high rates of HIV, too
often fail to effectively enforce their own laws against violence
and some don’t even have laws on the books. Only 25 countries have
developed national action plans on eliminating violence against
women.
It is high time that the epidemic of violence be addressed with a
new level of urgency—including much greater financial resources for
effective, evidence-based programs. Billions of dollars have been
mobilized for an initial—albeit inadequate to date—response to
HIV/AIDS, but, so far, the rising concern about the epidemic of
violence has led to almost no increase in financial resources for
the range of successful programmatic responses to violence. Given
the intimate connections between violence against women and children
and HIV, it is clear that the international community must urgently
implement a comprehensive response to stop the violence if we are to
have any hope of preventing and successfully treating HIV/AIDS.
This document describes a framework for a comprehensive response
to violence against women and children, including the resources that
would be needed, political and financial, for full implementation.
The following elements would be essential:
Pillar #1: Political Commitment and Resource
Mobilization Political commitment must occur at the
country, international and civil society levels. An international
commitment should include creation of a Global Task Force on
Violence Against Women and Children, consisting of UN agencies,
donor and affected country governments, and civil-society
organizations, with UNAIDS as secretariat. Another option would be
for the Task Force to become a major program of a new UN agency
focused on the needs of women, an agency recently proposed by the
Secretary General’s Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa, Stephen
Lewis.
Effective HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs, such as
those financed by the Global Fund, are addressing stigma, a key
driver of violence. These programs must be fully funded, and the
promise of universal access to HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment by
2010 must be kept. HIV/AIDS programs should be expanded to include
funding for programs to address violence against women and children.
Beyond HIV/AIDS programs, additional resources, at the level of at
least $2 billion beginning in 2007, are urgently needed for
effective, evidence-based programs that address violence.
Pillar #2: Legal and Judicial Reform
Countries should immediately enact and enforce legislation that
criminalizes all forms of VAWC, and legally mandate violence
recognition, prevention and response training for judicial
professionals.
Pillar #3: Health Sector Reform
Comprehensive reform of the health sector is needed to ensure
that VAWC is an essential element of universal access to care and
that the right to health, including sexual and reproductive health,
is met.
Pillar #4: Education Sector Reform Countries
should establish gender and violence trainings throughout the
education sector for professional certification, incorporate
violence into all national education strategies, and establish
schools at all levels as places of safety. Addressing the needs of
OVC is especially critical.
Pillar #5: Community Mobilization for Zero
Tolerance Local leaders and change agents should be
mobilized by a decentralized network of community task forces,
established by the national VAWC strategy, to identify, respond to,
and speak out against VAWC in their communities.
Pillar #6: Mass Marketing for Social Change
National strategies should include plans to conduct widespread,
comprehensive mass marketing campaigns aimed at eradicating
tolerance of violence and modifying harmful gender norms.
The world has already waited too long, allowing more and more
women and children to be victimized because of their lower status
and the systemic violence that enables governments, police,
neighbors and friends to turn a blind eye. The international
community should take concerted action to bring an end to this
epidemic on the basis of a coordinated and fully-financed plan.
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