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UNAIDS Action Framework: Addressing Women, Girls, Gender Equality and HIV

29 Jun 2009

World YWCA 

I am worth it

World YWCA

More accountability to women and girls in the AIDS response

Globally, women comprise about half of the 33.2 million people living with HIV. Women, especially young women are particularly vulnerable to HIV due to biological factors, inadequate knowledge about HIV and AIDS, insufficient access to prevention services, a general lower status in society and a lack of female-initiated/controlled HIV-prevention methods.

Risk to HIV infection is highest among the poorest and least powerful members of society, which includes women. The vulnerability of women, young women and girls is almost always exacerbated in situations of armed conflict where women and girls are likely to experience sexual exploitation and violence.

 

In order to address these inequalities and reduce the vulnerability to HIV that women face daily – just because they are women, strong leadership is required at all levels, especially from governments and the United Nations.

 

The work of UNAIDS is guided by a Programme Coordinating Board (PCB) with representatives of 22 governments from all geographic regions, the UNAIDS Cosponsors, and five representatives of nongovernmental organisations, including associations of people living with HIV.

 

In June 2006, the 18th Programme Coordinating Board of UNAIDS requested that guidelines be produced to address gender issues in response to the increased feminisation of the epidemic in many regions of the world. Governments would use these ‘guidelines’ as well as national AIDS programmes, donors, international agencies, the UN system and NGOs.

 

Three years later, at the 24th PCB meeting in Geneva, June 22 – 24, 2009, the UNAIDS Action Framework: Addressing Women, Girls, Gender Equality and HIV was on the agenda. The World YWCA and partners united to ensure that this framework will be implemented in a way that supports member states and the United Nations systems in taking concrete actions to address the vulnerability of women and girls, gender equality, women’s rights and their empowerment.

 

Following a number of governments supporting similar messages read out by the NGO PCB Delegation from Latin America and the NGO observer delegation many decision points were agreed on by the PCB – some of which include:

 

1. Further strengthening of the framework on women, girls and gender equality “by creating enabling environments for upholding women's human rights and addressing the needs of women living with HIV, including by providing a strong focus on comprehensive prevention approaches to HIV, Sexual and Reproductive Health, and Violence against Women, and through resource allocation and capacity building of women's organisations and networks of women living with HIV.”

 

2. Urgently move to implementation of the Framework and requested “the Executive Director of UNAIDS to, appoint an advisory working group, made up of experts on women and HIV, with representation of women's organisations and women living with HIV, to work with the Executive Director in developing, implementing, and monitoring an operational plan and further requests UNAIDS to begin operationalisation of the document by October 2009, incorporating feedback from the two technical dialogues held on 20 and 29 May respectively, and from the UNAIDS Human Rights Reference Group and the Inter- Agency Expert Group on Women and Girls.”

 

3. Requests “UNAIDS to provide a comprehensive progress report to the 27th PCB on UNAIDS activities in relation to the gender dimensions of the AIDS response, including a review of the Action Framework.”

 

Read the Women’s Observers Statement at the 24th Programme Coordinating Board meeting of UNAIDS: June 24, Geneva

 

I speak on behalf of 16 civil society, women’s rights organizations and networks of women living with HIV, with a collective constituency of over 25 million women girls, who have been following the work of UNAIDS on women and girls.

 

* We recognize the commitment of the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board to women, girls, and gender equality as shown by the last three years of work, attempting to follow through on the decision to develop, a UN framework on women and girls. Whilst we appreciate the UNAIDS initiative to have consultations around the draft framework, we were disappointed that few women’s rights groups and networks of women living with HIV were afforded the opportunity to participate in the design of the framework. While we note the number of inputs received, as referred to by UNDP, it must be said that these are of little value if they are not incorporated into the framework and only sought at the end of the process.

 

2. While we appreciate the work that has gone into the framework thus far we are concerned that the draft document does not contain some of the key elements and issues raised by civil society, women's networks and positive women's groups. These can be found in the attached annex.

 

We have the following concerns:

a. The process of developing the framework could have been stronger if it had included representatives of women’s rights organizations from the beginning and at all stages, rather than for such groups to come in only at the final stage and only as reviewers.

b. The quality of the framework has implications on the implementation of the framework and points to an underlying lack of capacity within the UN agencies to meaningfully engage with the population this framework seeks to affect and therefore meaningfully respond to the needs of women and girls. It also points to the need to bring programmatic experts on women and girls into the UN system.

c. Even though this is a framework for the UN, the UN is mandated is to work with governments, and stakeholders including civil society. This framework is still too anchored within the government and UN without enough recognition of the role being played by women’s rights organizations, community groups and networks in the response to HIV and AIDS. This is especially true in countries where states have failed and it is civil society who are responding to the pandemic. We therefore recommend the following:

 

1. That the PCB note the progress made thus far and requests UNAIDS to incorporate the substantial comments made by women’s rights organizations and networks of women living with HIV, which were not included. These points will be made available to UNAIDS by the deadline of July 10th

 

2. The PCB requests the UNAIDS Executive Director to play a strong leadership and substantive role in moving this work forward by forming and leading an expert working group to develop a strong operational plan for the framework, in close collaboration with women’s rights organizations and networks of women living with HIV

 

3. The PCB requests the UNAIDS Secretariat to provide strong monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of the framework, including costing, and review the progress made at the December 2010 PCB meeting

 

4. The final document and its operational plan should include specific actions related to capacity building of women's rights organizations and networks of women living with HIV, as well as resource allocation for the implementation of key actions noted in the framework.

 

5. We respectfully request the Chair to ensure that our concerns are reflected in the record of this meeting.

 

In closing, we call for an effective response to the feminization of the epidemic that so many of us understand and live on a personal level. All women have the right to equal justice, opportunity and dignity without discrimination. Until these commitments translate into concrete actions for women and girls they will have little meaning anywhere.

 

Signatories

 

African Services Committee
Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID)
ASTRA – Central and Eastern European Women’s Network for Sexual and Reproductive Health
and Rights
Bomme Isago Association
CARAM Asia
CHOICE for youth and sexuality
Foundation for Studies and Research on Women (FEIM)
Girls Power Initiative, Nigeria
Huairou Commission
International Aids Women’s Caucus (IAWC)
International Community of Women Living with HIV – Southern Africa
International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC)
Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe
World AIDS Campaign (WAC)
World YWCA
Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights

 

ANNEX

 

Key comments that still need to be included in the framework include:

 

1. The human rights commitments, including but not limited to Beijing, ICPD, and commitments to women and girls in the UNGASS and political declarations, be put in context and aligned with the framework.

2. The reproductive rights of all, including positive women, need to be recognized.

3. The UN, under the framework, should assist countries to complete simple, rapid assessments that identify key program and policy gaps, the actions needed to fill them, and resource organizations and people to do the work.

4. The framework needs to clarify how structural barriers to empowering women and girls will be addressed and overcome.

5. Greater clarity is needed regarding how women’s rights organizations and networks of women living with HIV will be included in programming, resourcing, implementation and monitoring and evaluation of the framework.

6. It remains to be noted that neither UNAIDS, nor PEPFAR has an indicator for progress on gender. The age group 15-24 is programmatically meaningless. UNAIDS' agreement to construct a gender indicator and to report data, at a minimum, on age groups 10-14,15-19, 20-24 would make a significant difference for program design and monitoring.

Related links:

·                         UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board





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