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Women 'most vulnerable to HIV'
09/11/2005 15:49 - (SA)
Kuala Lumpur - Women and children are the most vulnerable to HIV/Aids and failure to protect their legal rights is exposing them to the disease, said experts on Wednesday at an international convention for women lawyers.
The convention heard that the prevalence of HIV/Aids was increasing among women, with the burden of the pandemic greatest in sub-Saharan Africa, where many women were unaware of their rights.
Nigerian lawyer Victoria Awomolo said: "In most parts of Africa, girls and women face particular risks of HIV infection due to their disadvantaged physical, economic and legal positions and social status."
Unsafe sexual relationships
She said: "Women can't negotiate for safe sex or say no to unfaithful partners. Monogamous married women are powerless against infection by husbands with outside partners.
"To worsen their situation, economic dependency prevents women from leaving unsafe sexual relationships."
Experts said rights extend to protection from sexual violence such as rape, physical abuse and discrimination, as well as property rights.
Marina Mahathir, president of the Malaysian Aids Council and daughter of the former premier, said: "If you protect women's legal rights, you go a long way towards protecting them from HIV."
Cultural practices
Mahathir said: "The point is to reduce violence against women as a whole, using legal means, and that would also reduce women's vulnerability to HIV through violence."
While women had been traditionally disadvantaged through cultural practices in many African countries, experts said the HIV/Aids crisis highlighted the urgent need to reform laws to help women and children.
The general-secretary of the International Federation of Women Lawyers in Uganda, Lorna Juliet Amujojo, said discriminatory cultural practices such as "widow inheritance" - where women whose husbands died were "inherited" by their brothers-in-law - were still continuing.
Cultural belief
She said other practices, such as raping women and children who were virgins in the belief it would cure HIV/Aids, also had not abated.
Amujojo said: "There is this cultural belief that if you defile a small child who is still a virgin, you will be healed of HIV/Aids.
"That is a myth and it is actually a destructive cultural practice, with which the law even in southern Africa has not been able to deal because of the loopholes in their criminal law."
The five-day conference, which started on Monday brought together 200 delegates from 25 countries and hoped to highlight the plight of victims, particularly women and girls, and to promote gender rights.
- AFP
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