I experienced an earthquake and now a hurricane, have teleconferenced with colleagues in Geneva, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Bahamas, arranged a conference in Thailand, and gone into work early to make calls to Turkey. Where was I? In New York, of course! It's been quite an exciting summer working with the United Nations Development Programme ("UNDP") in the Gender Cluster of the HIV/AIDS Group of the Bureau for Development Policy ("BDP"). I had the privilege of touching livesglobally from the UN headquarters in New York this summer.
Part of the UNDP BDP HIV/AIDS Group, Evacuated for the August 23rd earthquake. (I am third from the right)
Reflecting on last year's work:
Last May 2010, I worked in as a Leitner intern in New Zealand in refugee family reunification, with the Wellington Community Law Centre. This was a direct client services position working through the legal process of New Zealand to refugees who had been resettled to New Zealand from parts of East Africa and South America.
This summer's experience was much different, not only because I was locally situated in New York, but also because I had the opportunity to work with an inter-governmental organization ("IGO") as opposed to an non-governmental organization ("NGO"). My involvement this summer was also more focused on policy than on direct client services. Each experience developed a different set of legal skills, and has allowed me to see the benefits of each working environment.
The facts on HIV & gender:
Much of my work has focused on the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women ("CEDAW"). (Get used to the acronyms--this is the UN). CEDAW is the primary international human rights treaty establishing the framework around which discrimination against women can be addressed. Through its focus on gender equality, CEDAW is a particularly helpful tool for enforcing the rights of HIV-positive women and girls. Article 12 of the Convention specifically addresses equality of the right to health, which in the context of HIV translates to equality in access to not just treatment but also to preventative care. Worldwide, about 50% of all people living with HIV are women. In the Caribbean 53% of HIV-positive individuals are women, and in sub-Saharan Africa it is closer to 60%. In Asia, while in 1990 only 21% of those living with the virus were women, this jumped to 35% in 2009. In short, women and girls bear an increasingly significant burden of the epidemic, and this extends beyond just these numbers.
Gender inequality is both a cause and a consequence of HIV. Women and girls' lack of sexual and reproductive health rights contributes to HIV vulnerability. In example, social norms suggesting sexual health education is inappropriate for women and girls, legal barriers requiring women to be accompanied by their husband to visit a sexual health center, and economic challenges preventing women from accessing the financial resources needed to travel to a clinic or pay for services all contribute to increased vulnerability of women and girls to HIV. An estimated 18% of material mortality globally is attributable to HIV. The effects of HIV also fall disproportionately on women and girls: taking on roles as caretakers for HIV-positive family members, experiencing heightened stigma within communities, becoming more likely targets for violence, and being coerced or into sterilization by medical professionals.
The work, an example:
With these realities in mind, one of my primary projects has focused on working with specific countries to augment their monitoring and reporting for CEDAW. Governments and civil society organizations like NGOs both contribute separate reports to the CEDAW Committee every four years. We are working to directly target three Caribbean countries who will be reporting in July 2012. To do this, we analyzed past reports for where HIV was addressed and looked for entry points where HIV could have been discussed and should be monitored in the future. Based on these conclusions, we will hold workshops in each of the countries meeting with NGOs working with HIV-positive women and provided technical support to develop strategies for monitoring discrimination and then for drafting the reports. For the government actors responsible for the report submissions, we will work with them separately in workshops in the same way.
Another aspect of the work has been targeting the CEDAW Committee, a panel of 23 experts on women's rights. Last month, we held a briefing with a plurality of the Committee members to brief them on the HIV dimensions of discrimination against women and develop a framework for moving forward with the Committee on incorporating HIV into the CEDAW report review process. This involvement will heighten in advance of the January 2012 and July 2012 CEDAW sessions as well.
The future:
This summer's work has been inspiring, and I will continue to work part-time throughout the 2011 fall semester.
For more information on HIV/AIDS and for support of the statistics referenced in this entry, see UNAIDS. Global Report on HIV. 2010, available at http://www.unaids.org/documents/20101123_GlobalReport_em.pdf
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