Global: Governments urged to meet their commitments to guarantee women's rights

8th March 2009

PRESS RELEASE:

Time to act is now: 2009 the year to guarantee women’s rights

International women’s coalition urges governments to meet their commitments toguarantee women’s rights without delay

The international Women Won’t Wait. End HIV and Violence against Women. NOW! campaign celebrates its two year anniversary and International Women’s Day. The campaign was launched on International Women’s Day - March 8, 2007, to demand that policy makers and donors integrate responses to violence against women in global and national AIDS programmes and allocate resources to these responses.

While women will mark 30 years of the CEDAW and 15 years of the International Conference on Population and Development this year; and 15 years of The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 2010, we are concerned that many commitments to protect, promote and fulfil women’s and girls’ rights governments had begun to make 30 years ago remain unfulfilled. We are also deeply concerned that commitments made by governments to achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support by 2010 will not met.

Norah Matovu Winyi, the Executive Director of FEMNET, a member of the campaign in Kenya, said, “We are less than a year away from 2010, and it seems clear that national governments and donors will not achieve universal access targets agreed by all. We are shocked that multilateral agencies set up to lead the world in the fight against HIV and in defence of human rights of the most at risk are rolling back universal targets as well as resource estimates required to meet these.” The campaign is especially distressed that resource estimates to address violence against women released by UNAIDS in early 2009 are considerably lower than those released in 2007. We expect all governments to meet their universal access targets, otherwise more people will die without treatment.
The Women Won’t Wait campaign also expressed concern at the continuing trend of governments criminalizing HIV exposure and transmission worldwide. The campaign noted that the trend to criminalise HIV transmission and exposure is short-sighted, ineffective and violates human rights, especially women’s rights. Further, it will undermine global AIDS prevention, treatment and care efforts.

The international coalition welcomes the new U.S. administration’s renewed commitment to women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights. It recognises that the administration under the leadership of President Obama has upheld the rights of women worldwide to have control over their reproductive and sexual lives by repealing the global gag rule. "The repeal of this dangerous policy is one important step forward in restoring access to sexual and reproductive health services and promoting democracy abroad. However, U.S. investment in international family planning has declined by roughly 42% since 1995," said Serra Sippel, Executive Director of the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE), a member of the Women Won’t Wait campaign in the U.S. "The United States should take the next step in advancing the health and well-being of the world's women and families by investing at least $1 billion in international family planning this year," she added.

The campaign calls on the US administration to advance and fund evidence informed, rights-based and gender sensitive AIDS responses, including a specific response to violence against women.

The campaign advocates that resources also need to be accompanied by clear guidelines and policies to ensure that all AIDS prevention, treatment, care and support interventions integrate community education on zero tolerance of violence. In addition, the promotion of laws and law enforcement that prevent and protect women from violence, training for health care personnel and legal infrastructures, and the availability of post-exposure prophylaxis, emergency contraception, female condoms and other female-controlled prevention ALL need to form part of a comprehensive approach to HIV&AIDS.

On International Women’s Day 2009, the Women Won’t Wait campaign once again calls for decision-makers, donors and activists to effectively address the intersections between violence against all women and girls and the spread of HIV.

The Women Won’t Wait campaign is an international coalition of organizations and networks working to promote women's health and human rights in the struggle to address HIV and AIDS and end all forms of violence against women and girls.
For more information on the Women Won’t Wait campaign:
www.womenwontwait.org

Women Won’t Wait is an international coalition of organizations and networks from the global South and North working to promote women’s health and human rights in the struggle to comprehensively address HIV and AIDS and end all forms of violence against women and girls. The coalition members are: 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).