ICW Resources

ICW, with the help of Ipas, an international organisation that works around the world to increase women's ability to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights, and to reduce abortion-related deaths and injuries, has developed a two-page briefing paper on abortion care and issues for HIV positive women.

The December 2007/January 2008 Issue
Special Focus: Reflections on positive women’s participation in international conferences, including Toronto AIDS2006, the Nairobi 2007 Women’s Summit, and looking forward to Mexico AIDS2008.

We are delighted to let you know that ICW has produced a new Vision Paper - 'HIV Positive Women and Drug and Alcohol Use'. This Vision Paper highlights the research conducted for Silent Voices, a unique participatory project carried out by and for HIV positive women on the experiences of HIV positive drug/alcohol using women living in London, UK. The project aimed to address the current lack of support and information available for HIV positive women who also use drugs and alcohol. In order to find out what services the women needed, ICW explored relationships, employment, motherhood, available services, and barriers to access.

The Survival Kit a key ICW publication developed by positive women. The survival kit now exists in English, French, Spanish, Thai, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic, Urdu, Russian and Ki-Swahili.

 

The file called - ICW_KIT_PORT.pdf - contains the entire Survival Kit including the fact sheets. Or you can download the fact sheets individually.

Women and Girls Living with HIV/AIDS: Overview and Annotated Bibliography, Esplen, E. and The International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (ICW), February 2007 Women's social, economic, and legal disadvantage is exacerbated by a positive HIV status, and vice versa. This report - consisting of an overview and annotated bibliography - considers the specific challenges faced by women and girls who are living with HIV and AIDS. Policy-makers must take their insights seriously. (También en español) http://www.siyanda.org/Static/esplen_women_hiv.htm

This manual (developed by Engenderhealth adn ICW) is designed to provide information and structure for a four-day training and a two-day planning workshop that will enable programme managers and health workers in resource-constrained settings to offer comprehensive, nonjudgemental, and quality care and support to HIV-positive women and adolescent girls in the local context. The manual also urges male involvement and promotes a holistic approach to integrated SRH counselling and programme planning that links SRH and HIV/AIDS services. It is based on the perceptions and understanding of SRH issues for HIV-positive women and adolescent girls, shared by HIV-positive women and adolescent girls themselves, their male partners, health workers, policy makers, and community leaders, gained through a qualitative research study conducted by EngenderHealth and UNFPA in Brazil, Ethiopia, and the Ukraine. The manual was field-tested with SRH and HIV/AIDS programme managers and health workers in Brazil, Ethiopia, and the Ukraine and the feedback from the field-tests was incorporated into this final version.

A monitoring tool on access to care, treatment and support, sexual and reproductive health and rights and violence against women created by and for HIV positive women, updated 2006.

In February 2005, the international Community of Women Living with HIV and AIDS (ICW) in collaboration with ActionAid-managed initiative Support for the International Partnership against AIDS in Africa (SIPAA), carried out workshops in Swaziland and Lesotho. The workshops aimed to examine the national response of each country to the HIV and AIDS pandemic, with particular reference to international policy commitments (in particular the GIPA principle, the Abuja Agreement of 2001, and the UNGASS Declaration of Commitment of 2001). First was an analysis of the lived experiences of the participants. An analysis of the documents was undertaken, first to see to what extent they addressed the rights, needs and concerns of HIV positive women, and second to see whether HIV positive women had experienced the effects of those political commitments on the ground. Further analysis was carried out into the monitoring and reporting systems used to report on progress against international policy processes, and finally, workshop participants developed their own monitoring and evaluation tool, to assess progress on issues both included and not included in the international policy documents.

A Positive Woman’s Survival Kit has been produced in English (attached), French, Spanish and Russian, Portuguese (links below), Urdu, Thai and Kiswahili (please write to info@icw.org for copies) and distributed to thousands of women across the globe. The Survival Kit is also used by HIV positive women in many parts of the world when running workshops for other HIV positive women.

• Spanish
• French - fact sheets
• Portuguese
• Russian (link to large file - 3MB) - information in Russian about the Surivival Kit

 

ICW observes with alarm the UN’s plan to dramatically scale up HIV testing. Not only is there a danger that such a strategy, particularly if tests are opt out, service provider initiated, will take the control from women and men to decide and prepare themselves for tests and for results, but there are also many current concerns with testing that have not been addressed and will only be exacerbated with scale-up. Although we recognise that knowing one’s status can sometimes enable us to better protect our health and that of our partners we have a number of fears, described below, with planned and current testing practice.