Kofi Annan's statement for International Women's Day
UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, has spoken out about the key contribution of women to the fight in HIV/AIDS epidemic and believes our further empowerment is key to the global response. Click here for UN Press Release
SECRETARY-GENERAL HAILS HEROIC WOMEN LEADING FIGHT IN HIV/AIDS EPIDEMIC, SAYS THEIR FURTHER EMPOWERMENT KEY TO GLOBAL RESPONSE, IN WOMEN'S DAY MESSAGE
Following is Secretary-General Kofi Annan's message on International Women's Day, which is observed 8 March. Click here for UN Press Release
As we mark this year's International Women's Day, we look at the devastating toll the global HIV/AIDS epidemic is taking on women, and the critical role of women in fighting AIDS.
At the beginning, many people thought of AIDS as a disease striking mainly at men. Even a decade ago, statistics indicated that women were less affected. But a terrifying pattern has since emerged. All over the world, women are increasingly bearing the brunt of the epidemic. Today, in sub-Saharan Africa, more than half of all adults living with HIV/AIDS are women. Infection rates in young African women are far higher than in young men. In the world as a whole, at least half of those newly infected are women, and among people younger than 24, girls and young women now make up nearly two thirds of those living with HIV. If these rates of infection continue, women will soon become the majority of the global total of people infected.
As AIDS strikes at the lifeline of society that women represent, a vicious cycle develops. Poor women are becoming even less economically secure as a result of AIDS, often deprived of rights to housing, property or inheritance or even adequate health services. In rural areas, AIDS has caused the collapse of coping systems that for centuries have helped women to feed their families during times of drought and famine — leading in turn to family break-ups, migration, and yet greater risk of HIV infection. As AIDS forces girls to drop out of school — whether they are forced to take care of a sick relative, run the household, or help support the family — they fall deeper into poverty. Their own children in turn are less likely to attend school — and more likely to become infected. Thus, society pays many times over the deadly price of the impact on women of AIDS.
Why, then, are women — usually not the ones with the most sexual partners outside marriage, or more likely than men to be injecting drug users — more vulnerable to infection? Usually, because society's inequalities puts them at risk. There are many factors, including poverty, abuse and violence, lack of information, coercion by older men, and men having several partners. That is why many mainstream prevention strategies are untenable, for example those based exclusively on the
SECRETARY-GENERAL HAILS HEROIC WOMEN LEADING FIGHT IN HIV/AIDS EPIDEMIC, SAYS THEIR FURTHER EMPOWERMENT KEY TO GLOBAL RESPONSE, IN WOMEN'S DAY MESSAGE
Following is Secretary-General Kofi Annan's message on International Women's Day, which is observed 8 March. Click here for UN Press Release
As we mark this year's International Women's Day, we look at the devastating toll the global HIV/AIDS epidemic is taking on women, and the critical role of women in fighting AIDS.
At the beginning, many people thought of AIDS as a disease striking mainly at men. Even a decade ago, statistics indicated that women were less affected. But a terrifying pattern has since emerged. All over the world, women are increasingly bearing the brunt of the epidemic. Today, in sub-Saharan Africa, more than half of all adults living with HIV/AIDS are women. Infection rates in young African women are far higher than in young men. In the world as a whole, at least half of those newly infected are women, and among people younger than 24, girls and young women now make up nearly two thirds of those living with HIV. If these rates of infection continue, women will soon become the majority of the global total of people infected.
As AIDS strikes at the lifeline of society that women represent, a vicious cycle develops. Poor women are becoming even less economically secure as a result of AIDS, often deprived of rights to housing, property or inheritance or even adequate health services. In rural areas, AIDS has caused the collapse of coping systems that for centuries have helped women to feed their families during times of drought and famine — leading in turn to family break-ups, migration, and yet greater risk of HIV infection. As AIDS forces girls to drop out of school — whether they are forced to take care of a sick relative, run the household, or help support the family — they fall deeper into poverty. Their own children in turn are less likely to attend school — and more likely to become infected. Thus, society pays many times over the deadly price of the impact on women of AIDS.
Why, then, are women — usually not the ones with the most sexual partners outside marriage, or more likely than men to be injecting drug users — more vulnerable to infection? Usually, because society's inequalities puts them at risk. There are many factors, including poverty, abuse and violence, lack of information, coercion by older men, and men having several partners. That is why many mainstream prevention strategies are untenable, for example those based exclusively on the