[afro-nets] RIGHTS: A Ghastly Disease Feeds Off a Ghastlier Oppression

["Claudio Schuftan" <claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn>]

RIGHTS: A Ghastly Disease Feeds Off a Ghastlier Oppression
----------------------------------------------------------

From: "Vern Weitzel" <vern@coombs.anu.edu.au>

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34470

RIGHTS: A Ghastly Disease Feeds Off a Ghastlier Oppression
Stephen Leahy

TORONTO, Canada, Aug 25 (IPS) - Gender inequality has become the main driver of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, especially in Africa, where 70 percent of those infected are women.

A new powerful international agency for women is needed to turn this situation around and address the growing problem of violence against girls and women, experts and advocates say.

Stephen Lewis, the U.N. special envoy for AIDS in Africa, agreed. "We will never subdue the gruesome force of AIDS until the rights of women become paramount in the struggle," he said at the conference. "It's a ghastly, deadly business, this oppression of women in so many countries on the planet."

The United Nations estimates that up to three million women lose their lives to gender-based violence and four million are sold into prostitution each year, while two million suffer genital mutilation. One woman in five is a victim of rape or attempted rape.

Women also make up the vast majority of illiterates in the world due to lack of educational opportunities.

To aggressively tackle these issues, Lewis has appealed to the United Nations to create an international agency to advocate for the rights of women, similar to UNICEF. The proposed agency would have a billion-dollar budget, employ thousands of staff and have widespread operational capacity on the ground where it is needed.

Women do not earn cash salaries and are not permitted to own land or open bank accounts in many parts of the world, leaving them powerless and poor.

HIV/AIDS cannot be effectively addressed without getting at the root causes of poverty and inequality.

HIV/AIDS prevention programmes will be ineffective without programmes to reduce violence against women, especially young women. These issues are not just African but apply to Southeast Asia and Latin America.

The U.N. currently has a small agency for women called UNIFEM -- the United Nations Fund for Women -- but with a relatively scant 40-million-dollar budget, limited mandate and few in-country staff, it is far from what is needed.

So where is the money going to come from for a U.N. women's agency? Global foreign aid is more than 100 billion dollars and is expected to reach an estimated 130 billion by 2010, Lewis told the High-Level Panel on U.N. Reform this summer.

"Is more than half the world's population not entitled to one percent of the total?" he asked.

The panel is charged with making recommendations regarding the reform of the U.N. and could recommend that the U.N. General Assembly create this new agency.

But it is far from certain the U.N. will create a strong and effective agency for women, Lewis readily admits. He urged those attending the Toronto conference in his final speech as U.N. envoy to "enter the fray against gender inequality."

--
Claudio Schuftan
mailto:claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn