http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=58000
World AIDS Day Focuses Spotlight On Links Between Sexual Violence, Broken Justice Systems And HIV/AIDS Pandemic
02 Dec 2006 In recognition of World AIDS Day, International Justice Mission calls upon the U.S. and other international donors to help AIDS-burdened countries in Africa build judicial capacity to investigate and prosecute sexual violence against women and girls.
"Rape is an HIV risk factor for tens of millions of African women and children and yet in many AIDS-burdened countries public justice systems are broken or virtually inaccessible to poor girls and women," says Holly Burkhalter, vice president of government relations at International Justice Mission, a Washington, D.C.-based human rights organization that strives to bring immediate relief to victims of oppression, slavery, trafficking and violence while pursuing prosecution for perpetrators.
"Defeating the AIDS pandemic requires that African women and girls have the right to protection under their own countries' laws. In addition to continuing successful campaigns to combat HIV/AIDS, these countries need hands-on help in getting rapists and batterers off the street and into jail."Burkhalter cites a June 2005 initiative announced by President Bush -- the "Women's Justice and Empowerment in Africa" program -- that pledged $55 million over three years to showcase successes in four African countries (Benin, Zambia, Kenya and South Africa) in creating judicial capacity to address sexual violence and increase services to victims.
Burkhalter notes that to date, only $1.2 million has been spent (in 2005), less than 3% of the money pledged in the program. No funds were used in 2006. (Initiative: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/06/20050630-5.html)"We urge the administration to fully implement the Women's Justice and Empowerment in Africa program with the same effectiveness as the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). That program's success demonstrates how quickly and effectively billions of dollars in foreign aid can be mobilized if an issue is prioritized.
It is past time to make protection from rape, child abuse, and domestic violence that kind of a priority," added Burkhalter.An international consensus has emerged that violence and degradation of women and girls are key factors in the rapid spread of HIV among this group; and yet, investment in protection for children and women is not on the international radar screen, says IJM. The organization proposes a "build it as we go" approach to strengthening national judiciaries in AIDS-burdened Africa. This includes ramping up investigations, prosecutions and convictions from the dozens to the hundreds, then thousands, while simultaneously training, equipping and recruiting police, prosecutors and judges.
As in the case of health systems, the greatest need of judiciaries is for skilled human resources, according to IJM. Local police need training, management, salary support and deployment to underserved rural villages and towns. Scaling up of rape cases requires DNA labs, rape test kits, witness protection capacity, referral systems, vehicles and computers. Corrupt or abusive police and judicial staff should be fired and prosecuted; incentives and benefits should reward excellence and confer prestige on police and prosecutors who take on sexual violence."When it comes to women and HIV, access to justice has to be considered AIDS prevention," added Burkhalter. "Functioning judicial systems are the next frontier in confronting the AIDS pandemic and preventing its spread."
About International Justice Mission
International Justice Mission is a human rights organization that brings immediate relief to victims of violence, sexual exploitation, slavery and oppression. A multi-national team of lawyers and law enforcement professionals conduct criminal investigations and collect evidence to relieve victims and bring perpetrators to justice, and IJM social workers secure appropriate aftercare for victims of abuse. IJM was founded by Gary Haugen who was the Officer in Charge of the U.N. investigation into the Rwandan genocide. IJM has 11 overseas offices in Africa, Latin America and Asia.International Justice Missionhttp://www.ijm.org
Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=58000
“AIDS prevention”
Showing posts with label sub-saharan africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sub-saharan africa. Show all posts
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
To Have and To Hold: Women’s Property and Inheritance Rights in the Context of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa
http://www.icrw.org/docs/2004_info_haveandhold.pdf
International Center for Research on Women
Information Brief (June 2004)
In 2004, UNAIDS launched the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS to call more global attention to HIV/AIDS-related abuses of women’s and girls’ rights and to promote action to counter abuses. The Global Coalition focuses on preventing new HIV infections among women and girls, promoting equal access to HIV care and treatment, accelerating microbicides research, protecting women’s property and inheritance rights, and reducing violence against women. For each issue, the Global Coalition works through a convening agency to raise awareness and promote action. The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) is the convening agency for the realization of women’s and girls’ property and inheritance rights. This bulletin is based on research, undertaken for ICRW by Dr. Richard Strickland, examining the linkages between women’s property rights and HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.
Research and intervention strategies are just beginning to consider the role that women’s property ownership and inheritance rights might play in potentially breaking the cycle of HIV/AIDS and poverty. There is growing evidence to suggest that where women’s property and inheritance rights are upheld, women acting as heads and/or primary caregivers of HIV/AIDS-affected households are better able to manage the impact of AIDS. Additionally, preliminary evidence indicates that such rights may help prevent further spread of HIV/AIDS by promoting women’s economic security and empowerment, thereby reducing their vulnerability to domestic violence, unsafe sex, and other AIDS-related risk factors.
Obstacles to Women’s Property Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa
In sub-Saharan Africa, women are adversely affected by acute discrimination in matters of property and inheritance, and they suffer disproportionately from the effects of discriminatory and oppressive laws, customs, and traditions regarding access to and control of housing and land (COHRE 2003). This can be attributed to a range of legal, institutional, and socio-economic factors (UN-HABITAT 2002; Walker 2002; Human Rights Watch 2003b).
Legal issues may include patriarchal laws and traditions that, in effect, deny women the ability to own and inherit land. Additionally, the relationship between traditional or customary law and statutory or de jure law may allow for gaps in implementation, monitoring, and enforcement of those laws that do recognize women’s equal rights to tenure. These gaps may be exacerbated by women’s lack of awareness of their rights.
Institutional factors such as cumbersome regulatory frameworks, costly procedures, lack of information, and corruption can undermine women’s ability to claim their rights, especially where women are underrepresented in structures of local and national governance and their needs and perspectives are inadequately incorporated into policies and programs.
Socio-economic factors affecting women’s secure tenure include poverty, urbanization, domestic violence, and natural and human-made disasters. As many as 41 percent of female-headed households live below local poverty levels and lack resources to buy land or property or develop land allocated to them (UN-HABITAT 2002). Women lacking rights to rural land may migrate to urban areas in hopes of securing property there, though often with tenuous results. Violence against women is sometimes used to threaten their eviction during family disputes or to break their claim to family property upon the death of the spouse (associated with the phenomenon of property grabbing). Further complicating the picture, a variety of tenure systems, legally or customarily defined, establish how property rights and the associated responsibilities and restraints concerning property are to be distributed within societies.
...The Importance of Property Rights
Throughout the world, ownership of land, housing, and other property provides direct and indirect benefits including a secure place to live, the means to a livelihood, and a measure of wealth or capital by which additional economic resources can be leveraged (land can serve as collateral for credit, for instance). Land has long been recognized as a primary source of wealth, social status, and power, providing the basis for shelter, food, and economic activities. Access to resources such as water and to services such as sanitation and electricity, as well as the ability to make long-term investments in land and housing, are often conditioned by access to land rights (FAO 2002).
... HIV/AIDS-affected households that enjoy rights to land and property are better-positioned to cope, as they have a stable, secure environment in which to provide care as well as a resource base that can generate much needed income to help compensate for lost wages of an ill person or a caregiver who forgoes a wage-earning job, and to cover various AIDS-related costs.
Unfortunately, the benefits of land ownership that can help mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS often are simply not available to women in sub-Saharan Africa. For instance, title deeds to land or house are normally issued to male heads of household, leaving women with a lack of secure tenure in case of divorce from or death of their husband. This may lead them to endure an abusive relationship or infidelity to safeguard their access to property through their husband, rather than seeking a divorce. Efforts to promote joint titling are underway in many countries, though the practical effects of the joint title have yet to be thoroughly tested or assessed.
If widowed, women may be victimized by others (such as in-laws and their relatives) through manipulative decision-making that denies rightful inheritance. They may be forced to forfeit their assets, including their land and house, to relatives of the deceased spouse through customary practices involving property grabbing or asset stripping. Such practices, fueled increasingly by the stigma and discrimination commonly experienced by survivors of AIDS victims, leave affected households destitute and more vulnerable to further consequences of HIV/AIDS (Drimie 2002a; FAO 2003; Human Rights Watch
2003a)...
International Center for Research on Women
Information Brief (June 2004)
In 2004, UNAIDS launched the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS to call more global attention to HIV/AIDS-related abuses of women’s and girls’ rights and to promote action to counter abuses. The Global Coalition focuses on preventing new HIV infections among women and girls, promoting equal access to HIV care and treatment, accelerating microbicides research, protecting women’s property and inheritance rights, and reducing violence against women. For each issue, the Global Coalition works through a convening agency to raise awareness and promote action. The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) is the convening agency for the realization of women’s and girls’ property and inheritance rights. This bulletin is based on research, undertaken for ICRW by Dr. Richard Strickland, examining the linkages between women’s property rights and HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.
Research and intervention strategies are just beginning to consider the role that women’s property ownership and inheritance rights might play in potentially breaking the cycle of HIV/AIDS and poverty. There is growing evidence to suggest that where women’s property and inheritance rights are upheld, women acting as heads and/or primary caregivers of HIV/AIDS-affected households are better able to manage the impact of AIDS. Additionally, preliminary evidence indicates that such rights may help prevent further spread of HIV/AIDS by promoting women’s economic security and empowerment, thereby reducing their vulnerability to domestic violence, unsafe sex, and other AIDS-related risk factors.
Obstacles to Women’s Property Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa
In sub-Saharan Africa, women are adversely affected by acute discrimination in matters of property and inheritance, and they suffer disproportionately from the effects of discriminatory and oppressive laws, customs, and traditions regarding access to and control of housing and land (COHRE 2003). This can be attributed to a range of legal, institutional, and socio-economic factors (UN-HABITAT 2002; Walker 2002; Human Rights Watch 2003b).
Legal issues may include patriarchal laws and traditions that, in effect, deny women the ability to own and inherit land. Additionally, the relationship between traditional or customary law and statutory or de jure law may allow for gaps in implementation, monitoring, and enforcement of those laws that do recognize women’s equal rights to tenure. These gaps may be exacerbated by women’s lack of awareness of their rights.
Institutional factors such as cumbersome regulatory frameworks, costly procedures, lack of information, and corruption can undermine women’s ability to claim their rights, especially where women are underrepresented in structures of local and national governance and their needs and perspectives are inadequately incorporated into policies and programs.
Socio-economic factors affecting women’s secure tenure include poverty, urbanization, domestic violence, and natural and human-made disasters. As many as 41 percent of female-headed households live below local poverty levels and lack resources to buy land or property or develop land allocated to them (UN-HABITAT 2002). Women lacking rights to rural land may migrate to urban areas in hopes of securing property there, though often with tenuous results. Violence against women is sometimes used to threaten their eviction during family disputes or to break their claim to family property upon the death of the spouse (associated with the phenomenon of property grabbing). Further complicating the picture, a variety of tenure systems, legally or customarily defined, establish how property rights and the associated responsibilities and restraints concerning property are to be distributed within societies.
...The Importance of Property Rights
Throughout the world, ownership of land, housing, and other property provides direct and indirect benefits including a secure place to live, the means to a livelihood, and a measure of wealth or capital by which additional economic resources can be leveraged (land can serve as collateral for credit, for instance). Land has long been recognized as a primary source of wealth, social status, and power, providing the basis for shelter, food, and economic activities. Access to resources such as water and to services such as sanitation and electricity, as well as the ability to make long-term investments in land and housing, are often conditioned by access to land rights (FAO 2002).
... HIV/AIDS-affected households that enjoy rights to land and property are better-positioned to cope, as they have a stable, secure environment in which to provide care as well as a resource base that can generate much needed income to help compensate for lost wages of an ill person or a caregiver who forgoes a wage-earning job, and to cover various AIDS-related costs.
Unfortunately, the benefits of land ownership that can help mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS often are simply not available to women in sub-Saharan Africa. For instance, title deeds to land or house are normally issued to male heads of household, leaving women with a lack of secure tenure in case of divorce from or death of their husband. This may lead them to endure an abusive relationship or infidelity to safeguard their access to property through their husband, rather than seeking a divorce. Efforts to promote joint titling are underway in many countries, though the practical effects of the joint title have yet to be thoroughly tested or assessed.
If widowed, women may be victimized by others (such as in-laws and their relatives) through manipulative decision-making that denies rightful inheritance. They may be forced to forfeit their assets, including their land and house, to relatives of the deceased spouse through customary practices involving property grabbing or asset stripping. Such practices, fueled increasingly by the stigma and discrimination commonly experienced by survivors of AIDS victims, leave affected households destitute and more vulnerable to further consequences of HIV/AIDS (Drimie 2002a; FAO 2003; Human Rights Watch
2003a)...
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