Editorial

By Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, General Secretary World YWCA

For women and girls, HIV and AIDS continue to be present in our lives and our communities, and to define our relationships. For more than a decade, the World YWCA movement has prioritised the response to HIV and AIDS, actively seeking solutions that work for women and girls.

HIV began with an alarmist response, informed by fear of death and deafening silence and denial. Many parts of the world communities responded to AIDS through care programmes in households; mostly task-shifting to women and girls. A huge political drive and awareness campaign to highlight the pandemics reality led to a massive international response, including the establishment of UNAIDS and the Global Fund for HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and wide-ranging community programmes. The social, economic and political impacts have been documented and debated.

We celebrated commitments to provide universal access to prevention, treatment, care and support for all those in need, yet many people living with HIV still lack access to treatment. We also acknowledge that even today, the work of caregivers continues to be under valuaed and almost always the unpaid work of women and girls.

Today, we are at the moment of recommitment to all rights: the right to life with dignity. This is the current narrative, where women and girls are demanding that we go beyond the numbers. We must give value and respect to every human life, and recognise how gender inequality and women’s subordination increases vulnerability to HIV. It remains true that the twin pandemics of HIV and violence against women have to be addressed together, with complimentary strategies that lead to comprehensive prevention.

As the world gathers for the XVIII International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2010) in July this year, women of the world are calling for effective solutions, ‘right here, right now’.

Young, old, positive, negative, single, married, poor, rich, and of differing abilities and nationalities; in all their diversity, women in the YWCA are calling for approaches that affirm and protect their rights, and respect their leadership and knowledge. They are demanding that:

• the rights of young women and women living with HIV be upheld for universal access to be truly universal;
• comprehensive HIV prevention strategies that are grounded in sexual and reproductive health and rights and address violence against women are a priority for investment;
• all AIDS responses promote and build upon young women’s leadership; and
• that stigma and discrimination be eradicated.

In this special ‘AIDS 2010’ edition of Common Concern, listen to the voices of faith, community and young women. Join the YWCA movement in its contribution to ending AIDS and empowering women and girls living with HIV. By supporting the YWCA, you are creating opportunities for solid interventions that promote life with dignity to millions of women and girls.