Enlighten! Empower! Engage! Fighting AIDS with Women’s Ways

Ladies (and a few gentlemen),

Three weeks ago I visited Kenya and Uganda together with my Aids Forum. We went there to see with our own eyes how people at the frontlines of the epidemic struggle with the challenges posed by hiv and aids in their daily lives. This is a struggle many of you present here today know from first hand experience.

What I saw moved me profoundly. The people we met were facing enormous challenges. I met a grandmother dying of aids, while having to take care of the children of her daughter, dead of aids. I heard a father tell the story of his little girl, coming home from school, after being sexually abused by her own schoolteacher. The anger and sadness of any father or mother in such a situation is overwhelming; this father knew there was now the possibility that his daughter was also infected by aids.

But some of the things we saw gave a lot of hope for the future. We saw women of the Nairobi slums rising above their difficult circumstances, organizing micro-credit schemes, starting small businesses and enabling their children to get secondary and even university education. We met young boys and girls, organized through sports, doing community work and peer education to help protect their own generation from hiv.

To me, it is not possible to understand and control an epidemic so closely linked to sexual behavior, without a clear understanding of the gender issues involved. Urban Jonsson, the UNICEF Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa, said it very well in an interview earlier this year: "Who takes the decisions on sex, on where and when? - The men! Everywhere, men use their power and this inequality is spreading aids. This has to be stopped." (Quote/unquote). According to the WHO, " Women’s right to safe sexuality and to autonomy in all decisions relating to sexuality is respected almost nowhere".

Many of us have been involved in the struggle for equal rights for women for a long time. We’ve come a long way – but there are no good reasons not to keep up the good work!

What is more painful and difficult to take in is the reality of sexually abused children and the dangers imposed upon them, including being infected with hiv and other sexually transmitted diseases.

We are now learning, from our collaborators in Save the Children and from the WHO, that sexual abuse is an underestimated mode of transmission of hiv, even to very small children. We know that adult men seek younger and younger female partners to avoid hiv, or even – of all things! - to be "cured". We know that in various African populations rates of hiv infection among young women (15-19 years) are 5-6 times higher than among young men.

We need to find ways to increase male responsibility, and we need to listen better to - and increase our efforts to - protect our children and youngsters. We definitely need to increase our support to children who are organizing themselves to improve their own situation and the conditions of their communities.

Tough economic and social conditions increase the burden on women and children and their vulnerability to infection. Economic hardship is driving an increasing number of young girls and women into prostitution.

We see this on all continents, particularly worrying in the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union, and closely related to the steep increase in unemployment among young people. The same hardship and depression are driving many young people - mostly boys and young men - into drug abuse. This makes them extremely vulnerable to hiv.

On the African continent in particular, the number of school drop-outs have increased because many children, mostly girls, drop out due to caring responsibilities or a significant drop in family income because of the death or illness of one or both parents.

We urgently need to scale up our efforts, and to develop new methods to provide for education, food, shelter and safety of the rapidly increasing number of aids orphans. In addition to securing basic education for all, we need to make sure that adolescents have access to education for prevention, condoms and reproductive health services. Not only governments and the international community, but also NGOs, such as the Red Cross, have a significant role to play here.

Challenges are great and numerous, even daunting. To meet them more effectively, all levels and sectors of society - both within each country and internationally - have to pull together. The NGO community and civil society have done very important work during the last twenty years in the fight against hiv/aids. In particular, your fight for the human rights and the human dignity of those affected and infected by hiv and aids, is commendable.

Last year, well aware of the importance of the contribution of the private and non-governmental sectors, I established a Forum for AIDS and development. This is a group of people where representatives of youth organizations, labor, business, culture, sport, churches, NGOs, the mass media, and people living with hiv and aids join together as partners to fight aids.

Within the ministry of foreign Affairs I have created an Aids Team, where all Director Generals - whether they work in administration, security, trade or whatever - join as a team to incorporate the fight against aids into all our foreign and developmental policy.

Norway’s aids problems are dwarfed by those in other countries. We must fight aids at the home front, too. But our most important contribution is on the international arena, through our multilateral and bilateral cooperation. Our fight against hiv/aids is part of our fight against poverty. For aids causes poverty. And poverty undermines our struggle to combat aids.

During the United Nations Special Session in New York recently, I met with several African leaders, who were particularly concerned with the situation of the now 13 million aids orphans, of whom most are living in Africa.

When visiting Uganda I was impressed by the work being done by several NGOs to help young orphans by giving vocational training. I became acutely aware that we need to both increase the scope of our efforts and to develop new ways of working to deal with the growing number of aids orphans. We will use the opportunity of the UN Special Session on Children in September to increase international support for girls’ education and for the rights of orphans in general - and aids orphans in particular. We will increase our cooperation with UNICEF, NGOs and other partners in the years to come.

Through the WHO, the UNDP and others we have for many years supported efforts to improve the reproductive health and ensuring the reproductive rights of women worldwide. This work has become even more important with the development of the aids epidemic.

Respect for the right to information - including information about sex and respect for the right to reproductive health - is essential in empowering women to protect themselves and reduce their vulnerability to infection, as well as in reducing mother-to-child transmission of the disease. This includes the right to make sexual and reproductive decisions free from discrimination, coercion and violence.

Women’s sexual and reproductive rights are inextricably linked to male responsibility. I believe that we need groundbreaking work to bring men on board - to increase male responsibility. This work has just started.

I wholeheartedly support the efforts to implement a comprehensive strategy on how to address responsible sexual behavior and hiv/aids in peacekeeping operations. We support this work by being a member of the Steering Committee on hiv/aids as a security issue, guiding and assisting UNAIDS in implementing the UN Security Council resolution 1308. Through this work, we hope to make uniformed services, peacekeeping forces and humanitarian aids workers agents of prevention and good behavior.

The military forces is one, important arena to work with men and hiv prevention. The workplace is another one, where an increased effort is necessary and where I urge the private sector - including Norwegian companies abroad - to take up the challenge.

Winning the war against aids will take courageous political leadership. In this regard, the consensus reached and the commitment shown by many leaders of state at the Special Session augurs well for the future.

Winning the war against aids will also take an unprecedented mobilization of resources. Additional resources. It will take external resources mobilized through innovative, private-public partnerships, like the proposed Global Fund on AIDS and Health.

My government has decided to increase the amount spent on aids and health by 110 million USD over the next 5 years, to be distributed both through the new Fund and through existing structures such as UNAIDS and the WHO.

The Norwegian Government welcomes and participates actively in the process to set up a new global fund. We keep a close eye on developments at country level, particularly increased access to affordable health services. We continue our cooperation with UNAIDS, WHO and the private sector to further reduce the price of aids drugs.

During the Special Session, UN member states agreed that prevention should still be the mainstay in our response to hiv. There is a great need to scale up preventive efforts. NGOs such as the Red Cross are already doing important work, particularly within peer education and sex education for young people, and also in home-based care.

Care is important, not only for the patients themselves, but also for their female relatives - who can be free to go to school or earn an income when released from taking sole responsibility for their family members who are ill. This again will have positive consequences, not only for the family, but also for the community at large.

Civil society organizations such as the Red Cross are invaluable bridges to community level action. Let me compliment your President, Astrid Nøklebye Heiberg, and the national organizers, for bringing together women and young people from more than 50 countries here today. Your experience is important. Your participation is crucial.

Last but not least, we need to listen - and listen more - to the people affected and living with hiv/aids. We need an approach to fight aids that is based on universal human rights. Discrimination of those infected not only violates human rights; it undermines effective prevention measures. Non-discrimination is a key to the social mobilization that is essential to turn back the aids epidemic.

Before I leave you, a quick remark on the participation at this conference: I have been told that members of the opposite sex - the weak one, that is - have been charged a fee to set foot at this conference. Sounds like a great investment to me, so my compliments to those men who did!

And, to all of you women and girls:

We shall win this battle in the end.

But we can’t beat aids without the men!

Thank you – and good luck in your future efforts.