Saying 'No' To Sex - A Woman's Right

This article by author Jennifer Bakyawa explores the issue of the relationship between women's rights and communication campaigns. She uses the Ugandan example of the ABC - Abstain, Be Faithful, Condom Use - one of sub-Saharan Africa's rare success stories in the fight against AIDS.

The author proposes that the ABC message may be catchy, but it does not automatically protect married women. Tens of thousands of Ugandan women have died from AIDS, the vast majority of them monogamous wives infected by husbands. The article cites Human Rights Watch (HRW) as stating that there is a problem with ABC prevention programmes because they rest on the assumption that women have the same decision-making powers as men over sexual choices. In August 2003, HRW claimed in its report, Just Die Quietly: Domestic Violence and Women's Vulnerability to HIV in Uganda, that the government's failure to criminalise domestic violence and marital rape "is costing women their lives". The report revealed that 34 of the 50 women interviewed by HRW confessed that their husbands physically forced them to have sex.

The article states that Ugandan women may finally gain legal protection against marital rape and other injustices in marriage which put them at risk of HIV infection. In late 2003, the Domestic Relations Bill (DRB), which reforms existing family laws and ensures women's equality and justice within marriage and at divorce, was tabled in Parliament. The DRB decrees that either partner can refuse to have sex on "reasonable grounds", including fear of disease. If passed, the Bill will make marital rape a civil and criminal offence. The Bill also tackles traditional customs such as bride price: money and/or goods paid by a man to his intended wife's family. Critics say the custom reduces women to sexual property and traps them in abusive marriages if their parents cannot or do not refund their dowry.

The author quotes Noerine Kaleeba, founder of The AIDS Support Organisation, an NGO, and an advisor to UNAIDS, who says ABC is a valid strategy but misses a fundamental point: "If women are married off early with bride price on their heads, they can't abstain." The author concludes by stating that women's rights groups argue that without this law and specific domestic violence legislation, wives are at an extreme risk of HIV/AIDS.