Kakaire A. Kirunda
14 September 2005
analysis
The rights of many HIV postive women are often violated by society, spouses and relatives, yet they need all the support they can get. But reports indicate that sometimes, the women bring the abuse upon themselves.
Women, research says, are among the most vulnerable as well as disadvantaged groups in all facets of the over 20 years old HIV/Aids pandemic.
Research also indicates that HIV/Aids, which has devastated the populations of countries worldwide, is having an increasingly disproportionate effect on women and girls.
According to Human Rights Watch, the relationship between abuses of women's rights and their vulnerability to Aids is acutely clear in Africa, where 58 percent of those infected with HIV are women.
Participants at a regional training workshop on HIV/Aids and human rights held from September 5 - 6 in Mbale. It was sponsored by Uganda Network on Law, Ethics and HIV/Aids (Uganet). Photos by Kakaire A. Kirunda
Studies into the pandemic have concluded that women living with Aids confront not only stigma, but also the deprivations caused by violations of their rights. It has also been observed that relative to the scale and severity of these abuses, laws, policies, and programmes to combat HIV/Aids by protecting the rights of women and girls are negligible.
In light of the above, many questions abound. Are men's rights different from those of their female counterparts? Should women's rights be violated even when they are suffering from the incurable Aids? Are HIV positive women to blame for their woes?
A regional training workshop on HIV/Aids and human rights from September 5 - 6 in Mbale provided some answers to these questions.
The training, that brought together stakeholders including persons living with HIV/Aids, was organised by the NGO Uganda Network on Law, Ethics and HIV/Aids (Uganet).
Taking the blame
Ms Lydia Kiriire, a Legal Officer with FIDA Uganda's Tororo Legal Aid Clinic presented a paper titled Protection of Women Rights in the Context of HIV/Aids, which had interesting and invaluable information.
According to Kiriire, a greater number of women have given up on their rights in situations of HIV/Aids due to the wrong perception that no one can let them have their rights. Because of this fear and intimidation, they give up quickly.
"Others fear to be stigmatised and isolated so they make concessions which deny them of their rights, which is indeed a higher form of stigmatisation both for being a woman and for having HIV/Aids," Kiriire argues.
She adds that women also blame themselves for having become sick. In this, she says, many women take culpability for being unable to keep with the expectations of society, family and friends, for failing to be of benefit especially to the spouse thus giving up hope.
To Kiriire, "Women as well put their children's needs first before their own and will always make concessions if it concerns the welfare of the children though it is an abuse of rights."
Kiriire adds that when sick, some women may deny the situation and therefore fail to get appropriate help, due to failure to have a family life run as expected.
All the aforementioned analyses have seen women denied treatment, access to their children, property inheritance and subjected to domestic violence among other rights abuses.
Helpless
Kiriire's arguments raise a big question. Do women carrying HIV or suffering from Aids voluntarily compromise their rights?
Interestingly, Kiriire has the other side of her arguments. "Poverty and financial or economic disempowerment leaves the women especially when in ill health, to the mercy of the person they depend on, who is most often the spouse."
Nevertheless, this observation is not far from what the New York-based Human Rights Watch has often found out in several of its research projects.
One of the recent research reports is A Dose of Reality, which was based on hundreds of interviews with women from around the world including Uganda.
The report showed that abuse of women's and girls' human rights impedes their access to HIV/Aids information and services, including testing and treatment. Those who do obtain HIV services, the study found, sometimes face disclosure of their confidential HIV test results by public health officials without the women's consent.
Uganet's Sam Kaali agrees to that, saying a few delinquent medical workers are breaking ethical guidelines and disclosing the sero status of some of their patients to third parties. Kaali was giving an overview of the Human Rights framework in Uganda, with a special focus on HIV/Aids at the Mbale workshop.
This heightens women's risk of being ostracised by their communities and abused by their intimate partners.
A Dose of Reality further said that women in Kenya and Uganda told HRW that they could not reach HIV testing and treatment centres because they had no money to travel or pay for care, were too afraid to ask abusive husbands for funds, or were not allowed to leave the home.
Rebecca Samanya told HRW, "I got counselling after he [her husband] had died. I wanted to go before but I didn't have the means. I wouldn't ask him. He would quarrel [fight]."
Many widows told HRW that after they had been denied inheritance and lost everything to property-grabbing in-laws, they had no money to survive, much less to pay for antiretroviral therapy and other health care.
Another Ugandan, Jane Nabulya was quoted saying that she secretly tested for HIV in 1999 when she found out her husband had Aids.
"I was scared to tell him that I had tested HIV-positive. He used to say that the woman who gives him Aids, 'I will chop off her feet.' I have never told him," She explained.
Sules Kiliesa's story is not any different as an earlier report by HRW, Domestic Violence and Women's Vulnerability to HIV-Infection In Uganda, suggests.
Apparently, after her first husband died, Sules was forced to remarry by her father. Her new husband had three wives and 15 children, aside from hers. He beat her and raped her persistently. She is now HIV-positive. "I was usually the one who was beaten. He would beat me to the point that he was too ashamed to take me to the doctor. He forced me to have sex with him and beat me if I refused. This went for every woman [wife]. Even when he was HIV-positive, he still wanted sex. He refused to use a condom. He said he 'cannot eat sweets with the paper [wrapper] on'."
Sules was also blamed by her in-laws for her husband's death from Aids in 1993 and as a result, she could not provide for her children.
"Relatives called me 'the killer'. I asked them for land to till to help maintain the children. They sent me to the family heir - the son of the eldest woman. He beat me and told me he didn't want to see me tilling his father's land yet I had killed his father. When I took the matter to the police they collected [arrested] him," she said.
"The brother-in-law brought the family to the family court. They told me to stop cultivating the land. Two of my children are now on the street because I cannot meet their demands. My first girl had to get married at 16. The second boy left school at only nine," she narrates.
It is because of tales such as these that activists are saying domestic violence prevents women from freely accessing HIV/Aids information, from negotiating condom use, and from resisting unprotected sex with an HIV-positive partner, yet the government has failed to take any meaningful steps to prevent and punish such abuse.
Way forward
Uganet Executive, Director Ms Esther Kisakye, just like most of her colleagues in the NGO argued at the Mbale workshop, thinks victory in the battle against violation of their abuse lies in the hands of the sick women themselves.
It is because of this belief, said Kisakye that Uganet is empowering people with human rights knowledge in the context of HIV/Aids. "We believe that if people are not trained and sensitised about HIV/Aids and the law, all our efforts as a country will not bear fruit," she says.
Kiriire also says that on a general note, good advocacy campaigns, lobbying for law reform and policy change, widening the scope of accessibility of legal services and legal knowledge to the rural communities can go a long way in protection of the rights of women especially those that are suffering due to HIV/Aids.
"This has already been proved to work very positively due to community input in areas where it has been tried," she added.
HRW also says Uganda should provide support to NGOs that work on domestic violence, establish domestic violence and HIV/Aids campaigns specifically targeting women. The rights watchdog also wants the government to prioritise the provision of shelters for abused women and their dependent children, and support programs that provide legal assistance and counselling services for women.
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