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Women: Champions in the fight against HIV/AIDS - Kofi Annan
December 1, 2004
In his message on World AIDS Day - Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United
Nations pays a glowing tribute to women for their role in combatting HIV/AIDS
and calls them the most courageous and creative champions in the fight against
the epidemic.
The full text of his message reads: This year's World AIDS Day is an occasion
to recognize the burden that women and girls bear in the age of HIV/AIDS, but
equally, to celebrate their achievements in the fight against the epidemic.
Women are our most courageous and creative champions in the fight against
HIV/AIDS. In most countries and communities I have visited around the World, it
is women's voices that are heard above all others; women advocates and
activists who are moved to act selflessly and speak publicly, often risking
prejudice, abuse or violence, in order to improve the lives of others.
The courage that women are showing in this fight is matched only by the toll
the disease is taking on them. Women already bear the brunt of poverty.
AIDS makes the poverty trap even easier for them to fall into, and even harder
to break. Women continue to face discrimination on a number of fronts - from
the workplace to laws governing land ownership and inheritance. AIDS puts them
at even greater risk. Girls already make up the majority of children not in
school. When AIDS strikes the family, those girls who are attending school are
all too often taken out, to help run the household and care for sick relatives.
Women now account for about half of all people living with HIV worldwide. In
sub-Saharan Africa, where more than three quarters of all HIV-positive women
live, almost 57 percent of adults living with HIV are women.
Why are women more vulnerable to infection? Why is that so, even where they are
not the ones with the most sexual partners outside marriage, nor more likely
than men to be injecting drug users? Usually, it is because society's
inequalities put them at risk - unjust, unconscionable risk. A range of factors
conspires to make this so: poverty, abuse and violence, lack of information,
coercion by older men, and men having several concurrent sexual relationships
that entrap young women in a giant network of infection.
Nor does marriage always offer protection: in some heavily affected countries,
married women have higher rates of HIV infection than their unmarried, sexually
active peers.
These factors cannot be addressed piecemeal. What is needed is real, positive
change that will give more power and confidence to women and girls. Change that
will transform relations between women and men at all levels of society. Change
that can only be brought about through the education of girls, through legal
and social reforms, and through greater awareness and responsibility among men.
Change that will allow women to play to the full their role in the fight
against HIV/AIDS. Empowering women in this struggle must be our strategy for
the future.
It is among them that the real heroes of his war are to be found. It is our job
to furnish them with hope.
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