Facing the Future Together: Report of the Secretary-General's Task Force on Women, Girls and HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa

Commissioned by the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, this 31-page report emerges from discussions of the 27 members of the Task Force on Women and Girls in Southern Africa. They here argue that stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS among women and girls in Southern Africa will significantly improve chances of slowing the pandemic. However, the authors stress that slowing the spread of HIV/AIDS is more than a medical problem, and depends on targeting and changing the inequality between men and women in Southern Africa. In short, the authors suggest that, among the international community, the objective of equality must be as important as the objective of halting the spread of the disease.

The authors claim that inequality is evident in laws, social practices, access to health care, and expectations of labour and domestic responsibility. However, despite the fact that men and women have such different social experiences, the authors suggest that most strategies to combat HIV/AIDS are gender-neutral, and fail to account for men's and women's different needs.

The paper outlines the findings of the Secretary General's Task Force on Women, Girls, and HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa, particularly in Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. These findings include:

• prevention: girls must be protected from the risk of HIV infection by older men
• education: governments must take active measures to keep girls in school
• violence: governments must protect women and girls from the risk of exposure to HIV infection as a result of violence
• property and inheritance: women and girls must have secure rights to own and inherit land
• women and girls must not be solely relied upon as care-givers
• women and girls must be able to access adequate medical care and treatment

The paper is divided into 7 substantive sections, covering topics such as:

1. Facing realities - For instance, HIV prevention programmes need to work to face the specific needs of girls and women in Southern Africa who are members of fragmented and marginalised groups (refugees, migrant labourers, the economically poorest) and to develop strategies to reach these groups effectively and directly. Participation - making these girls and women actors in determining their own future - might be a key approach to consider.
2. Keeping girls in schools and keeping schools safe - "The Mnjolo Community in Malawi offers an encouraging example of what can be accomplished when communities become actively involved in girls' education. With the help of two trained facilitators, routine community gatherings such as markets,
   storytelling sessions and meetings of parents' and teachers' associations provide opportunities to discuss how factors such as HIV/AIDS, as well as initiation ceremonies and other traditional practices, have led to girls dropping out of school....As a result, school enrolment increased by about 50 percent and no further drop-outs were recorded."
3. "ABC" (abstain from sex, be faithful, use a condom) and new approaches to prevention - The authors suggest that women and
   girls need to be given a voice in their own affairs, and encouraged to deal directly with previously taboo subjects such as HIV, sexuality, contraception and gender inequality. Governments and their partners can facilitate this by creating a wide range of “safe
   spaces” for information and dialogue through "reinvigorated health services capable of providing competent, accurate advice on sexuality, reproductive health and HIV prevention; comprehensive life-skills education in schools, taking advantage of high enrolment rates in the region; and youth programmes that encourage gender equality, in which girls feel free to say what they like and what they
   don’t, and young men learn what constitutes appropriate and respectful sexual behaviour."
4. Silence and violence -The Strength Media Campaign, launched by Men Can Stop Rape in 2001
   and 2004, is one example cited here of an educational effort that seeks to prevent rape and
   other forms of dating violence by focusing on the message that men can be strong without being violent.
5. Women's work - caring for those with HIV/AIDS - The authors call for a Volunteer Charter so that caregivers are no longer taken for granted. They also stress that the burden of caring for the sick, the dying and the orphaned needs to be shared more equitably among all members of the community, which will involve, in part, "a sustained effort to recruit men into home-based and community care programmes...boys must be socialised
   from an early age to accept that caring for the sick is not merely 'woman’s work.'"
6. Property and inheritance rights - "Traditional leaders are ideally placed to ensure that the protective features of customary law are used to complement common law and protect women’s rights. For example, after extensive discussions, Ondonga traditional leaders in Namibia recently amended their customary law to provide that women
   should remain in possession of land after the death of their husbands."
7. Access to care and treatment - National antiretroviral (ARV) programmes and expanded
   voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) services need to be closely coordinated with initiatives such as those programmes working to involve male partners, and should include training that provides counsellors with clear guidance on gender-based violence, partner notification, and confidentiality.

The paper concludes with the following recommendations:

• There is need for public engagement around shifting the social norms and values that undermine women's rights.
• Improving the self-esteem, confidence, respect and self awareness of boys and girls is essential. Yet self-esteem and self-respect mean nothing if laws and policies do not allow women to access opportunities.
• Southern African states must expand and strengthen existing health and education institutions in order to reach women and girls who are ordinarily ignored.