16 Days--WAD activist toolkit

[Guest guest]

http://www.globalaidsalliance.org/16_Days_of_Activism_Against_Gender_Violence.cfm

The Global AIDS Alliance now has

available Integrating World AIDS Day and 16

Days of Activism against Gender Violence: An Activist Toolkit. You

can download it at the link, above. The introduction to the Toolkit is below. The

Toolkit is designed to help AIDS activists incorporate the intersection of

violence against women and children and HIV/AIDS into our planning for WAD and beyond.

Please disseminate this widely and

use it in your own World AIDS Day planning. Thanks!

16 Days of Activism Against Gender

Violence Toolkit

The 16

Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is an international campaign sponsored

by the Center for Women's Global Leadership, and endorsed by the Global AIDS

Alliance. The campaign is strategically timed to begin on November 25,

International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and end on

December 10, International Human Rights Day, to highlight the fact that

violence against women is a human rights abuse. The campaign also overlaps

World AIDS Day, December 1, underscoring the links between violence and

HIV/AIDS.

GAA has

prepared a toolkit to help HIV/AIDS activists call attention to the role that

violence against women and children (VAWC) plays in the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The

toolkit provides an overview of the 16 Days of Activism campaign, the

intersection of violence and HIV/AIDS, and a list of action ideas you can

implement on World AIDS Day and throughout the 16 Days campaign.

The 16

Days campaign is intended to (1) raise awareness about gender-based violence as

a human rights issue at the local, national, regional and international levels;

(2) strengthen and link local and international work around violence against

women; and (3) create tools to pressure governments to implement promises made

to eliminate violence against women. Ultimately, the campaign seeks to inspire

global activism against gender violence and establish the prevention of

violence against women as a fundamental human right.

GAA's

toolkit seeks to focus the international community's attention on the essential

links between violence and HIV/AIDS, and to ensure that violence is integrated

into HIV/AIDS programs. Violence of all kinds is central to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Women who have at any time been forced to have sex are more likely to use

condoms inconsistently than women who have never been coerced. Children who

experience violence are more likely to engage in behaviors known to be risky

for HIV in adolescence and adulthood. Fear of violence can prevent women and

adolescent girls from negotiating safer sex, even when it is consensual.

Violence or the fear of violence can prevent women from seeking voluntary

counseling and testing (VCT), returning for their test results, disclosing

their serostatus, or getting treatment if they are HIV positive. The lack of

well-trained health care workers compounds these problems because there is

often no one to recognize the symptoms of violence or provide potentially

lifesaving care to the victims of violence.

This

toolkit is intended to equip the international community with the information

and skills needed to integrate violence into HIV/AIDS policy and programs.

Addressing violence is essential both to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS and to

address the epidemic's disproportionate impact on women and children.

The

toolkit features true stories from women and children who have experienced

violence and HIV that you can use in your events. We have also included factual

and multimedia resources to make your programs informative and engaging.

Schechtman

Policy & Grassroots Associate

Global AIDS Alliance

1413 K Street NW, 4th Floor

Washington, DC 20005

(202) 789-0432 ext. 212

lschechtman@...

“It is time to end tolerance and complicity....We

cannot stop the spread of HIV unless we stop discrimination and violence

against women and girls.”

-- UNFPA Executive Director, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid