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Sierra Leone: Action Aid Condemns Marginalizing of Women
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Concord Times (Freetown)
15 May 2008
Posted to the web 15 May 2008
Rachel Horner
Freetown
Women's right coordinator Action Aid International (AAI) Tuesday condemned the marginalizing of African Women.
Giving an overview of a four day workshop on women's rights and HIV/AIDS in Freetown, organized by AAI and African Women Development Fund West Africa (AWDF) Mary Wandia said African women have been marginalized while African women's rights groups have been missing in action.
She said the aim of the workshop is to strengthen the leadership and collective organizational power of women's movements, with a focus on grassroots leadership and constituency-building strategies, for sustained impact on public opinion and decision making at all levels.
Sarah Mukasa of AWDF said HIV/AIDS in Africa has the face of young African women disadvantaged in many ways. She said the responses in terms of initiated government and inter governments agency often excluded these women.
She said AWDF has been supportive to women's organizations in order for them to live in a changed world in which transformed women can live with integrity and peace.
Action Aid Sierra Leone Country Director Tennyson Williams said women's right /HIV/AIDS is fundamental to their programme work.
Giving an Inspirational Talk, Boi Jenneh Jalloh said strive has been made in fighting the epidemic in Sierra Leone, adding that collective voice of HIV/AIDS women is growing but the membership is not growing.
Jalloh said it is encouraging that women living with HIV/AIDS have broken the silence.
Director of the National HIV/AIDS Secretariat (NAS) Dr. Brima Kargbo said for more than 20 years into the epidemic, women account for about half of the estimated 40millionpeoplelivingwith HIV worldwide.
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Kargbo said many women at risk of infection do not engage themselves in high-risk behaviors, rather they are caught up in a situation of the paradox of low risk and high vulnerability. "They are not allowed to exercise their rights, at times women in many cases become infected by their much loved ones," he said.
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