HIV/AIDS & Violence Against Women

Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Jan 24 (IPS) - The issue of violence exacerbating the spread of HIV/AIDS, particularly in women, has remained a hot one at the World Social Forum (WSF), taking place here this week.

From Africa to Asia, activists are reiterating that violence against women remains a threat to the HIV/AIDS fight, and that without governments addressing the matter, winning the war against the disease will be an uphill task.

"Violence is largely a cause of HIV infection among many women; violence in the homes and in the streets, violence everywhere," says Ludfine Anyango, the national HIV/AIDS coordinator at Action Kenya-International.

The fact that women do not have an upper hand in negotiating their sexual relationships exposes them to the risk of being infected with the disease, agreed Forum participants.

"Many women cannot even choose when to have sex or not. Many cannot ask their husbands to use a condom because in addition to being thought as unfaithful, they fear being beaten. The woman then has no choice but to continue having unprotected sex with her spouse," Anyango added.

Violence in the streets similarly subjects female sex workers to the risk of HIV infection, according to Ros Sokunthy of Women's Agenda for Change, an organisation fighting for the rights of women, including female sex workers, in Cambodia.

"A sex worker negotiates with one man. When she gets to the venue she finds more than one man and they all want to have sex with her. When she refuses, she is beaten or raped," Sokunthy told IPS.

"Usually the sex worker has two condoms. If at the venue she finds three or four men, the condoms will not be enough. The men will beat her up if she denies them sex, or insist on using sugar plastic bags which are weak and easily get torn, exposing her to HIV infection," she said.

These scenarios, according to experts, explain why more women than men are infected with HIV/AIDS. Last year's report of the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) says in sub-Saharan Africa -- which is home to about 64 percent of the world population living with HIV/AIDS -- more women are infected than men.

WSF participants also heard that women were beaten by their spouses if it was discovered that they had visited HIV/AIDS voluntary testing and counselling centres (VCTs).

"We have had cases whereby some women come to us and tell us 'please do not tell my husband that I was here because if he knows, he will kill me when I go back home.' When we follow up, we find out that the husband is HIV positive," said Mary Watiti, a counsellor at a VCT centre in Kibera, Kenya's biggest slum.

"This fear discourages many women from knowing their HIV status and thus continue having unprotected sex with their spouses," she added.

This phenomenon has resuscitated calls for new laws to address all forms of violence against women, and strict implementation of the law in countries where such legislation is already on the book. Changing laws is soon as one of the effective ways of countering the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Kenya came into the spotlight for having a law that addressed sexual violence, but which had loopholes that made it possible for women to continue being violated sexually, with little recourse for justice.

"Even though we have the Sexual Offences Act, it does not recognise marital rape; yet HIV/AIDS is mostly spread through relationships," said Inviolata Mbwavi, the national coordinator of the Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS in Kenya.

A domestic violence bill, which stipulated strict penalties for offenders in the East African country, was overtaken by time and has now to be re-tabled in parliament. The bill was introduced in 2000.

However, laws alone are not enough to address HIV/AIDS. Male involvement in the fight against the pandemic is critical, say groups including UNAIDS, given that men are generally not proactive in terms of seeking VCT services and, sometimes, compromise the management and care of those infected.

HIV/AIDS experts argue that because men seem to fear stigma more than women do, they rarely visit VCT centres.

A study conducted in Indonesia last month shows that nine out of 10 men were offended when asked by their partner to go for VCT and refused testing, while eight out of 10 women agreed to be tested.

"This is because men keep thinking that VCT and HIV/AIDS is only for the high-risk groups," Suksma Ratri of Rumah Cemara, an HIV/AIDS research organisation, told IPS.

Failure to seek counselling and testing locks men out from treatment programmes. This may lead to infected men taking some of medicine from their wives who are on treatment programmes.

This practice is widespread in low income settings across African countries, according to James Kamau, coordinator of the Africa Civil Society Coalition on HIV/AIDS.

"Experiences in Kibera slum and the poorest areas in central and western Kenya indicate that women were sharing drugs," he said.

But experts warn that tampering with ARV (antiretrovirals, the main treatment for HIV/AIDS) dosage is a sure way developing resistance to cheaper and affordable drugs. When this happens, the affected person will be forced to pay ten times more to buy ARVs that can manage resistant strains of the virus.

"As long as our men are not part of the war, then we should forget about ending HIV/AIDS infection and the violence that comes with it," according to Lilian Musang'u, a WSF participant from Malawi.

The WSF is an annual gathering of social activists seeking to chart out ways of countering the dominance of the rich western nations. This meet of tens of thousands of activists generally takes place in January, as a counterweight to the World Economic Forum, an annual meeting of powerful business and political elites held in the Swiss alpine resort of Davos.

Since 2001, the events have been held in Brazil and India. Last year it was a polycentric forum that was held in three places, Bamako, Mali; Caracas, Venezuela; and Karachi, Pakistan. At least 50,000 from across the world people are present at the Nairobi event.