Julia Greenberg
2 December 2008
(Page 3 of 3)
The co-chairs also recognised that while it was okay for gender issues to be development issues, it was distinctly not okay for gender issues to become a Trojan horse for human rights issues. The High Level panel's recommendations related to human rights would most definitely have been taken as conditionalities by member states, so the co-chairs quietly dropped them from the discussion, noting that the Human Rights Council in Geneva was the appropriate body for these issues. According to Mahiga, he could feel the member states breath a 'collective a sigh of relief.'
He concluded our meeting with the following statement. 'Resources are dipping for development activities through the UN, but its convening power is unique and its leveraging power increased if it is efficient, effective and people can trust it.' To that, we chimed in, 'AIDS-Free World would argue that in light of what the you just said, the UN needs women.'
'That is an understatement', he replied, echoing the chorus of the many male African ambassadors suddenly championing the cause of the world's women from Rwanda to Zambia: 'If we have women there, that is where the salvation lies. We are depriving the world of half of its riches.' We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
AUGUST THROUGH SEPTEMBER: A DECISIVE MOMENT?
Immediately before the 62nd General Assembly, the deputy secretary-general produced what has become known among the community of NGOs with whom we have been working to promote the women's agency as 'The Options Paper', delineating a range of possible structures for a new UN agency for women. Among the options suggested are: 1) Maintaining the status quo; 2) Simply combining the existing, fragmented agencies; 3) Creating a new composite organization that will combine normative and operational functions; and 4) an autonomous fund or programme.
When the paper was released in July, the member states convened, remarkably, for their third discussion on gender equality and women's empowerment in three months and requested that the deputy secretary general further elaborate on the options presented, with a particular focus on the composite entity. Two months later, member states adopted, by consensus, a resolution to take 'substantive action' on the women's agency in its next session.
SIGNIFICANCE OF A NEW WOMEN'S AGENCY FOR THE AIDS MOVEMENT
If any movement knows how to mobilise communities to demand that the international community create institutions that respond to their needs and rely on their expertise, it's the AIDS movement. UNAIDS is one of the few UN bodies whose governance structure includes NGOs and people living with AIDS as permanent board members. If it was not for the tireless work of AIDS activists in the late 1990s through to the early 2000s, the Global Fund for AIDS, TB, and Malaria would not exist, and certainly would not have the innovative mechanisms for civil participation that currently help drive its policies and operations.
But let's not look at these institutions through rose-tinted glasses. Even with civil society participation in UNAIDS and the Global Fund, the international community's response to the impact of HIV/AIDS on women can only be characterised as a failure. The statistics tell the story: women comprise 61% of women living with AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa; AIDS is the leading cause of death among black women in the United States aged 25-34; only 34% of the world's women have access to a simple therapy to prevent transmission of the virus to their children - the global target set in 2001 was 80% coverage. Data on the links between HIV infection and conflict-driven sexual violence is practically non-existent. What we do know is terrifying. For example, UNAIDS reports that the HIV prevalence rate in Democratic Republic of Congo is between 1.7% and 7.6 % depending on the region, and may be as high as 20% among women who have been raped in the conflict-riddled east of the country.
Women working at the community level to cope with the devastating impact of AIDS know instinctively that women's vulnerability begins at birth and continues when the boy-child is the first to receive school fees, when girls are circumcised and married off early, when domestic violence explodes, and when girls are conscripted into wars as fighters and sexual slaves. That is why women-led AIDS programmes around the world deal not only with prevention and care, but with human rights training, inheritance and property rights protection, and advocacy to abolish hidden school fees. And, it's always the case that these effective and innovative programmes are constantly struggling for recognition and funding.
A women's agency with significant resources and visionary leadership could support these kinds of programmes and fill other huge holes in the UN's AIDS response. To name a few: there is no single agency representing women's issues among the co-sponsoring organisations of UNAIDS (UNIFEM reports to UNDP, so is not represented directly); UNICEF touts as a success the fact that globally 34% of women who need prevention of vertical transmission therapy have accessed it, but says little about the fact that these same women face significant barriers accessing treatment for themselves. Today, when a conflict erupts, gender experts are evacuated as 'non-essential staff', and as a result rape prevention and post-rape treatment (including post-exposure prophylaxis) are rarely implemented as part of the emergency response.
It may be too much to ask to expect women, who already heroically carry the lion's share of the burden of the AIDS response on their backs, to divert what precious little of their energy remains to demanding a role in a new UN women's agency, but if they did, there is no doubt that the UN would be infinitely stronger for it.
THE MONTHS AHEAD
Unlike many of the ambassadors with whom we spoke, of course AIDS-Free World does not support this particular UN reform simply because it's winnable. And of course we believe that women's rights are human rights, and that human rights should be central to every aspect of UN reform. But we vastly prefer the current language coming from member states about gender equality as a moral and ethical imperative, than the language of donor-imposed conditionality. We will try to hold them to their statements.
If in the 63rd session of the General Assembly, ending in 2009, the proposal for the women's agency stalls again, AIDS-Free World and our allies in the women's and AIDS movement will loudly and publicly question whether the UN has the credibility to speak on behalf of women at all. If the proposal pushes through, that is when the work will really begin. The time will have come to demonstrate to the honourable co-chair from Tanzania, that indeed, if women are there, that is where the UN's salvation truly lies.
Stay tuned.
* Julia Greenberg is AIDS-Free World's associate director.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/
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