Africa: Violence Against Women Inherently Linked to HIV, Advocate Says

October 21, 2006

Africa: Violence Against Women Inherently Linked to HIV, Advocate

Says

allAfrica.com

INTERVIEW

October 11, 2006

Posted to the web October 11, 2006

In August, the Global Aids Alliance released a report, Zero

Tolerance, that outlines the impact of violence against women and

girls on the fight against HIV/Aids. AllAfrica's Margaret McElligott

spoke to Communications Director Bryden about his perspective

on this week's UN reports on violence against women and children,

and the role of the UN system in defeating HIV/Aids.

One of the first parts of the Global Aids Alliance's response to the

report on violence against women focuses on the influence that the

new secretary-general will have. Have you had a chance to start

researching Ban Ki Moon? What role do you think he will play?

He seems to be a consensus candidate. He does not have a reputation

as a bold leader on the issues that were addressed in our report and

that came out this week at the UN. Maybe that's something that as he

settles in as the new secretary-general and begins to exercise his

voice on this issue we'll start to see that greater leadership come

out. Kofi n's shoes are going to be hard to fill, but that's

what we need. We need someone of that level, that stature and that

willingness to challenge donors to do what needs to be done and to

challenge the world in the way that Kofi n did on HIV/Aids.

It's hard to say how the new secretary-general will be, but he

doesn't have a reputation as someone likely to do that. We're hoping

that we're proved wrong on that point and we're ready to be proved

wrong.

Another thing that you call for, and it echoes statements that

, the UN secretary-general's special envoy to Africa on

HIV/Aids, has made, is the creation of a new UN women's agency. What

keeps a new UN women's agency from being marginalized in the UN

community or underfunded the way that you write that Unifem has been?

That's a good question. I'm not sure anyone has a clear answer.

's office actually issued a paper outlining why this

agency was important. It was a pretty impressive paper laying out

the kind of authority that this agency needed to be effective. I'm

hoping that if it is established, and it looks like it may be from

what I've heard, that it has that level of authority and level of

funding that he called for because one of the things that the report

identifies rather clearly is that programs at the UN have not been

as well-coordinated as they should be. There are some overlapping

mandates and that may be alright, but it's just that we need to see

coordination of all the efforts on this. It needs to be elevated to

a much higher political status – the issue itself – and the

importance of acting not just on violence but on other issues

related to women as well.

In terms of estimating the global resources needed to combat

violence against women, who do you think should come up with that

estimate?

I think that what we've seen already is that UNAIDS has developed a

level of expertise of estimating resource needs for particular

problems and going even beyond narrow issues of prevention and

treatment and looking more holistically at issues of doing their own

resource estimate on HIV/Aids - they include a number of things that

are actually applicable for this problem as well in terms of

training and education at a national level. We think that UNAIDs

would be an appropriate agency to undertake that kind of study. WHO

obviously has an important contribution to make here as well, so

it's probably something that would need to be a collaborative

effort. But I was surprised that the report didn't explicitly call

for the development of that kind of estimate.

Are you familiar with the various programs working directly with men

to combat violence against women?

Yes, there's some really exciting work being done by NGOs. You're

talking about the group in Kenya?

Right, and South Africa and a couple other places.

Yes, I think it's critically important and I'm really excited about

what the Men in Red are doing in Kenya. I think that's the kind of

thing that men really need to get on board with - these kinds of

programs – and get involved at the local level, at a national level.

Because when you do, as men who care about this issue, who

understand what it is, what we need to do is exemplify a different

approach and really make sure that through peer pressure [we] convey

the importance of this to men who are out of line. The solution

isn't only empowering women – obviously that's an important

solution – but it's also taking men to a higher level of

understanding about this.

What are some of the issues girls face in school?

The whole situation affecting particularly girls, but also boys to

some extent, in schools in Africa is just horrific. We have some

really striking statistics from Malawi where as many as half of all

girls are reporting sexual abuse in the public schools. It's a

problem that really does need to be addressed. We've got abuse

coming from fellow students and we've also got abuse coming from

teachers. There's a real need to weed out the teachers that are not

behaving responsibly through legal action and also through

prevention through training.

Africa: Violence Against Women Inherently Linked to HIV, Advocate

Says

(Page 2 of 2)

The Safe Schools program is something that the U.S. Agency for

International Development has pioneered. They've done a needs

assessment in a number of countries. It's only operational though in

two countries, so it's moving pretty slowly. They've also done a

needs assessment in Ethiopia and Jamaica but nothing's actually

underway in terms of programs in those countries. It's something

that really needs to be sped up. They do teacher training, they

conduct workshops to talk through these kinds of issues, [and] they

have different kinds of manuals which they've produced.

We also have just basic infrastructural problems where children may

have a long way to walk to get to school. They also may be on a long

bus ride with a bus driver who will take advantage of his position.

He's got access to some money, being a salaried employee, so that

can make him attractive as a sugar daddy to some girls who are in

real need of school fees. These issues all go together.

Even if you look at something as basic as lavatories - we don't

necessarily have something as basic as lavatories with doors. And we

don't necessarily have single-sex lavatories, so we may have boys

and girls going to the same lavatory. There are situations which

make girls vulnerable in these schools,and there is a real drive,

not only in Africa but in the world, to get all children in school,

to get them the access to education that they deserve. That's a goal

that the UN has signed on to as one of the Millennium Development

Goals and there's an important initiative for the British government

on that as well. But at the same time we need to make sure that the

schools are safe for all children to be in.

The other thing is corporal punishment. and it's controversial in

some settings regarding the value of corporal punishment, but all

the academic studies that we've seen suggest that it's not effective

and that it shows the child that a physical response is a way to

solve a problem. That's not the kind of example that we need to show

to children. Corporal punishment can be pretty extreme in some

countries, so that's something we really need to look at: whether

that's the appropriate thing. The UN report that came out this week

on children really made that clear. They call for an end to corporal

punishment and that's something that we support as well.

When you were working on Zero Tolerance, how much willingness was

there in national education departments to talk about sexual

violence in schools ?

That's a good question. We did not do a lot of interviews of that

kind, so that's something that we still need to do. What we had done

was collect available research that had already been done by a

number of observers and experts on these different issues. So we

didn't figure out to what extent that they are willing to admit it

the problem.

It's obvious that in Malawi there's a problem based on the

statistics that I gave you and so it's encouraging to see that there

is a USAID program there active in 40 schools already. There are

some positive things happening. Even on the broader issues of

violence, there are some positive examples of governments starting

to take action on violence against women and violence against girls.

For instance, now in Tanzania there's an impressive effort to train

judicial officials and judges at various levels of authority, so

thats encouraging. There have been some important legal reforms in

the DRC. The South African government is providing a one-stop center

for women who have been affected by violence, and sexual offenses

courts are an important innovation there too. Some good things are

going on. What was interesting to me was how frank the report that

came out this week on violence against women was in terms of being

very clear that efforts to date have been grossly inadequate.

You were surprised by that frankness?

I was, because the UN is a creature of member states. It's sponsored

by member states and in effect this report is criticizing a number

of member states. It took real issue with a number of traditional

practices that are prevalent in a number of African countries. It

took issue with religious fundamentalism in the post- 9/11

environment. There were some statements in the report that I thought

were bold and that was valuable.

Coming back to your first question, [with] the next secretary

general, the jury is still out on that. I happen to think that

that's an important question, but we would also need to look to

major governments including the U.S. and other G8 governments – how

are they going to prioritize this within their own assistance

programs? How will they integrate this concern? It also comes down

to the individual, the individual man, how he sees the world. He

needs to take responsibility for this and make it clear that this is

something that has to stop. One upcoming opportunity that's exciting

is White Ribbon Day – it's actually mentioned in the report – when

men and boys are encouraged to wear a white ribbon to symbolize

their rejection of violence against women.

Is there anything else that you think people should know about the

report or about the relationship between Aids and violence against

women?

One of the things that I wanted to say was that this issue would be

important even if it didn't have any connection with HIV/Aids, but

it often does. There's just no way that the world is going to meet

the goals that we've set on HIV/Aids unless we take violence on, and

really address it with a fully funded response. That's something I

think that we have to make clear when we're talking about HIV/Aids.

We have governments like the U.S. who have really decided to invest

significant resources now in fighting HIV/Aids, but our view is that

that effort is not going to succeed unless this aspect of violence

is fully addressed. Because if there is violence, or the threat of

violence, a girl or woman is much less likely to be able to

negotiate safe sex, to get tested [or] to reveal her status. It's a

real issue. But the other thing that's important to recognize when

we start talking about these things is that it does sound like a

problem that's so big that it would be impossible to address. That

was why in the report itself it was encouraging to see they

identified some strategies that are really working.

And in Zero Tolerance, too.

Yes, we really did. If you look at microenterprise programs, for

instance, you can point to some real results in terms of lessening

violence. It's about taking the culture to a new place. It can be

done. Culture is not an immutable thing.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200610110940.html?page=2

October 21, 2006