Gender

Nicola Ndovi, Malawi Gender Programme Officer at the International AIDS Conference

The title of this blog isn’t meant to be misleading – to date there is no cure for HIV and AIDS!
During the 2010 AIDS Conference in Vienna however there has been much discussion of scientific progress towards a cure and even a vaccine for HIV and AIDS. Achieving this goal however remains challenging. HIV/ AIDS is a complex disease that requires complex solutions.

Your gut instinct and that rational part of your brain would tell you that laws are a good thing, that they are brought in to protect people’s rights, particularly the rights of the most vulnerable. However sometimes laws brought in with the best of intentions, do not always have the best of consequences.

The theme of the XVIII International AIDS Conference, which is taking place this week here in Vienna is ‘Rights Here, Right Now’ and certainly women’s rights are high on the agenda. One of the biggest issues in relation to women's rights violations, that of violence against women is a key area of discussion  at the conference and in many of the sessions to date, there have been stark and challenging reminders of the need to put the issue of violence against women at the heart of the HIV and AIDS response.

Every visit we make to the communities where we work is a reminder that gender equality is an essential precondition for the achievement of Trócaire’s vision of a world free of injustice and poverty.

Mrs. Ana Sanchez, a campesino woman from the community Tutimayu, is a married mother of five children.  Since 2006 Ana is one of the leaders of an Organisation in Bolivia called Campesino Women Bartolina Sisa Umachay (Tutimayu). In 2007 she was elected as Secretary of Finance, Central Board of the Provincial Campesino Womens.

By Sean Farrell.

In many ways it’s sad we have to hold an International Womens Day.  It’s sad that we pencil a day in the global calendar once a year to higshlight the issues of the rights of women.  It’s sad we have to highlight the many abuses, violations and inequality that women all over the world face.  It’s sad and it’s a reflection on us as people, as communities, as a country and as a world community.

The sixteen days of activism on gender based violence (GBV) has been observed by one of Trócaire’s partners in India, the National Alliance of Women (NAWO), and its member organisations for the past 10 years. This year is no exception and NAWO have a host of activities underway to mark the global campaign against GBV.

For this year’s campaign NAWO has focused most of its efforts on highlighting how a very particular form of GBV is affecting the declining sex ratio in the eastern state of Orissa.

The Congo's (Democratic Republic of) sexual violence epidemic is usually associated with the East of the country, where active conflict is still ongoing, and with soldiers or rebels as perpetrators, but you only need to scratch the surface to discover it is a much broader and deeper phenomenon.

Sometimes we don’t recognise the richness of experience and learning that is right on our doorstep. That was exactly what I felt last week when I spent two fascinating days in Belfast with three East Timorese women’s rights partners and our gender advisor from Pakistan. The idea was to share common experiences and learning from their countries and Northern Ireland about women’s involvement and roles in peace building.

Stepping onto the Enterprise to head North, at what felt like the middle of the night, I wasn’t entirely sure what way the day’s programme would pan out but my expectations were running high.

I was joining Trócaire and Timorese colleagues for the 2nd leg of a two day programme which was aimed at giving our three friends from Timor – Mira, Filomena and Gizela - a sense of the Northern Ireland context, and some of work and initiatives that is being carried out by organisations and communities in the post-‘troubles’ era.