UN-INSTRAW and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) called for increased financial support to gender equality and women’s empowerment in the fight against HIV and AIDS at a recent meeting organized by UNIFEM and supported by the European Commission.
The Expert Group Consultation on Tracking and Monitoring Gender Equality and HIV in Aid Effectiveness was hosted by UN-INSTRAW in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on 28–30 May 2008.
Leading experts were brought together to discuss monitoring of development aid so that it is more effective in addressing the gender dimensions of the HIV and AIDS pandemic. Participants from across the world examined strategies to support nationally led processes of tracking and monitoring progress to reduce HIV infections among women and girls by improving their access to sexual and reproductive health and rights, and reduce the HIV-related violence they face. They emphasized the importance of tracking and monitoring financing for gender equality in the response to the HIV and AIDS pandemic and identifying, reviewing, and refining key programme indicators.
“It is essential that we know how and where gender equality and HIV and AIDS are being included in the aid effectiveness agenda in order to ensure that aid is really ‘effective’ for women and girls,” said Teresa Rodriguez, UNIFEM Regional Programme Director for Mexico, Central America, Cuba and the Dominican Republic.
“The first challenge is to increase information and ensure transparency around budgets and expenditures on gender equality and HIV and AIDS, which could provide valuable insight into political commitment and priority-setting, sustainability and flexibility of funding, and management issues such as balancing the allocation of resources with the capacity to effectively manage them,” added Carmen Moreno, Director of UN-INSTRAW.
Participants highlighted the importance of including gender equality in HIV programming as a key issue at the
High-Level Meeting on AIDS in New York; and the
Third High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, which will take place in Accra, Ghana, on 2–4 September 2008. The Forum will include the five-year review of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2003) and will provide a crucial opportunity to strengthen the fulfilment of agreements on gender equality and HIV and AIDS, such as the Millennium Development Goals.
At the conclusion of the meeting, participants called on governments, donor agencies, civil society and the UN system to focus on the intersection of HIV, violence against women and sexual and reproductive health and rights by ensuring alignment of HIV programmes, national development priorities and international commitments on women’s rights and HIV/AIDS. (See the
outcomes and recommendations of the consultation.)
The HIV and AIDS crisis remains one of the world’s most pressing problems. According to recent UN data, in 2007 33.2 million people were estimated to be living with HIV or AIDS, 2.5 million people became newly infected, and 2.1 million people died of AIDS. Women are now at the epicentre of the pandemic. Of those living with HIV and AIDS in 2007, 47 percent were women, though in sub-Saharan Africa, women represent 61 percent of the total. “This is primarily due to women’s unequal status and the fact that women and girls have less access to information on safer sex, and do not always have the ability to insist on condom use with their partners,” stated Nazneen Damji, Programme Specialist on HIV and AIDS with UNIFEM.
While gender inequality is increasingly acknowledged as a key force behind the HIV and AIDS pandemic, there is still little recognition of this reality in global and national policies, programmes and, in particular, budgets. The continued lack of dedicated financial and human resources means that women remain at the sidelines of attention to the pandemic, without access to life-saving information and health services.
Press release