WUNRN
SAFE & SECURE, INCLUSIVE SPACES
& RIGHTS FOR WOMEN & GIRLS
In a world where the spread of HIV and violence intersect, and where women and girls are disproportionately affected, a comprehensive approach to prevention is urgently needed. Central to this is the creation of safe spaces where women and girls can make choices about their sexual and reproductive health and live free from violence, stigma and discrimination. In this article, World YWCA Deputy General Secretary, Natalie Fisher-Spalton explores the idea of comprehensive prevention for a safer world.
Prevention
Broadly speaking, prevention is about ensuring something does not happen. That ‘something’ can be an action such as violence or transmission of a virus like HIV. It is far more effective and desirable to eliminate the problems we wish to avoid rather than having to address the consequences after the fact.
Whether it is violence against women, HIV and AIDS or other sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) issues, taking a broad approach to prevention, which recognises that these issues frequently intersect makes sense. Promoting, protecting and respecting human rights, including women’s rights, gender equality and freedom from stigma and discrimination are essential in a comprehensive approach to prevention.
World YWCA global advocacy efforts continue to push for comprehensive prevention and the creation of safe, secure and inclusive spaces for women, young women and girls to exercise their rights. This includes a call for greater investment in comprehensive HIV prevention strategies that are grounded in SRHR and address violence against women (VAW).
At the XVIII International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2010), taking place in Vienna from July 18-23, 2010, the World YWCA will host the satellite session ‘WANTED: Comprehensive Solutions for All Women’. This session will emphasise linkages between SRHR, HIV and VAW, and promote the combined elements of empowerment, safety and information in achieving comprehensive prevention for women and girls. It will also explore how to progress AIDS responses that address the multiple challenges facing women.
Violence against women
Globally, it is estimated that six out of 10 women experience physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime. A World Health Organisation study of 24,000 women in 10 countries found that the prevalence of physical and/or sexual violence by a partner varied from 15 percent in urban Japan to 71 percent in rural Ethiopia, with most areas being in the 30–60 percent range.
Another study in South Africa found that women who have been forced to have sex are almost six times more likely to use condoms inconsistently than those who have not been coerced. This clearly demonstrates the link between violence and the increased risk of HIV infection. While marital rape is a prosecutable offence in at least 104 countries, and 90 have laws on sexual harassment, in too many countries significant gaps in legal protection remain. There are no specific legal provisions against domestic violence in 102 countries, and marital rape is not unlawful in at least 53 nations.
Violence against women is a global health crisis of epidemic proportions, and too frequently, it is a cause and consequence of HIV. Violence, and the threat of violence, dramatically increase the vulnerability of women and girls to HIV infection by making it difficult for women to abstain from sex or to demand that their partners be faithful or use condoms. Violence is also a barrier for women in accessing HIV prevention, care and treatment services. Women and girls have the right to access these services, just as survivors of violence have the right to access counselling, legal assistance, health care, shelter and other vital supports.
Organisations like the YWCA are working actively in communities around the world to support women survivors of violence and abuse through policy and legislative advocacy, emergency shelters, hotlines, counselling, skills training and awareness raising. Central to this is empowerment and providing enabling spaces where women are able to take control of their lives.
It is also about investing in young women and their capacity to be champions in their communities and countries in responding to VAW, SRHR and HIV. This is an important priority for the World YWCA, and one that will be taken up in Vienna through the young women’s forum, ‘Our Rights, Our Bodies’. This forum will provide an unique opportunity for young women to discuss issues on the agenda at AIDS 2010, and to build knowledge and identify advocacy opportunities to make an impact on the conference agenda.
Safe spaces
The notion of ‘being safe’ speaks to the enjoyment of universal human rights and being free from stigma and discrimination. It is about enabling women, especially young women, to make decisions about their lives, including sexual and reproductive choices such as marriage and the number and spacing of children.
Women, young women and girls define their ‘world’ in many ways. It is the private spaces of family in homes, bedrooms and kitchens. These intimate spaces should offer love, caring, healing and support, as well as nurture the full potential in every person. Yet too often, these private spaces are where women and girls experience domestic violence, are violated, abused or neglected. It is also the place where women and girls, often unknowingly, contract HIV and other STIs.
Public space, on the other hand, comprises places of social, community and economic activity such as schools, playgrounds, parks, streets, markets and places of worship. These spaces, which are supposed to be empowering, enjoyable and foster collective identity, relationships and livelihoods, have sometimes been spaces where violations of women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights have occurred. They are spaces where women and girls, too frequently, live in fear and have their freedoms and rights curtailed.
The YWCA is a strong advocate for the creation of safe spaces at every level. In more than 22,000 communities around the world, YWCAs provide safe and empowering spaces for women, young women and girls without fear of discrimination, stigma or prejudice. They also actively initiate and support programmes to promote safety and security for women and girls, including freedom from violence and discrimination in homes, schools, workplaces, communities and countries. Guiding this work, is a belief that safe spaces are those in which women and girls, in all their diversity, can achieve their full potential. All women are entitled to live in safety and security, regardless of their HIV status, age, creed, race, sexual orientation, ability or ethnicity.
The World YWCA will bring safe spaces to the Vienna International AIDS Conference. Through its exhibition booth in the Global Village, the YWCA will provide a safe place for all women and girls attending the conference to meet. The booth will creatively explore issues of safety and safe spaces for women and girls, and encourage participants and visitors to contribute their ideas.
Moving forward
A vision for a ‘safe’ world must include freedom from violence in both the public and private spheres, as well as universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support. Women urgently need access to full and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services. The provision of safe spaces for women and girls, alongside comprehensive prevention is vital in achieving this vision.
As Sharon Bong, a scholar of feminism and theology, highlighted at the World YWCA Asia Pacific Regional Training Institute, these ideas are founded upon a conviction about the value of every human person, endowed with rights and entitled to a life with dignity. She argued that to realise our full human potential and to live life abundantly, women must be free from fear, want, oppression or catastrophe.
Safe space is about the personal security of women and girls, and the right to live in safety and free from violence in every dimension of life. Safe space is also about ensuring that HIV and STI prevention is in the hands of women. It is about the economic security of women, including freedom from poverty and the ability to make choices about where to live and work, and to move freely from place to place. And it is about the political security of women, and the right to live in peace and participate in all facets of democracy. Consistent with UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, women must be actively involved in conflict prevention, conflict resolution and peace processes.
Laws and policies have been put in place in many countries to address these issues, though they remain inadequate in themselves without the resources, strategies and education required for success. At the global level, there has been an increasing focus on peace and conflict resolution over the past decade, and the vital importance of women’s participation in all facets of democracy. Aspects of the Beijing Agenda and the Declaration of Commitment to HIV have been infused into the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). As the policy framework for development, with a re-energised focus on the agenda established at the International Conference for Population and Development (ICPD), this is critical. Yet fragmentation persists with insufficient attention and analysis of how these agendas intersect, and how these efforts could work together to deliver better results for women and girls.
Financial resources for the promotion of gender equality and women’s rights remain unacceptably low. Insufficient political and policy commitments have resulted in community-based service organisations, like the YWCA, carrying a disproportionate burden of responsibility without the matching resources.
Minimum standards that all countries should have in place include ready access to emergency hotlines, shelters, post-rape care that includes post-exposure prophylaxis, and free legal aid. This “frontline” response can be strengthened by working with police, health care professionals, legal aid workers and the judiciary, and by supporting the development of effective multi-sector referral systems for survivors of violence.
The key to comprehensive prevention, however, is expanded and sustained investment and human capacity to deliver. Political neglect and underfunding has resulted in most efforts responding to the emergency needs and rights of already-abused women and women living with HIV; largely delivered by women’s groups and other civil society organisations operating on shoe-string budgets. As such, insufficient attention has been paid to prevention.
The donor community should rise to the challenge of supporting comprehensive approaches rather than funding narrow sectors. While it may be difficult to track and measure, the long term benefits for women and girls far outweigh the challenges. Comprehensive prevention offers real possibilities for women and girls to ‘live life abundantly, free from fear, want, oppression or catastrophe’.
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