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Strategic objective C.3.
Undertake gender-sensitive initiatives that address sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS, and sexual and reproductive health issues
Actions to be taken
108. By Governments, international bodies including relevant United Nations organizations, bilateral and multilateral donors and non-governmental organizations:
a. Ensure the involvement of women, especially those infected with HIV/AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases or affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, in all decision-making relating to the development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes on HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases;
b. Review and amend laws and combat practices, as appropriate, that may contribute to women’s susceptibility to HIV infection and other sexually transmitted diseases, including enacting legislation against those socio-cultural practices that contribute to it, and implement legislation, policies and practices to protect women, adolescents and young girls from discrimination related to HIV/AIDS;
Beijing Declaration (1995)
In paragraph 108, the emphasis is on the nation-state, the United Nations, and a wide variety of other actors important to the flourishing of women from the top down. This is a top-heavy section.
For the women infected with HIV/AIDS, or any other sexually transmitted disease, this can be treatable in some cases and fatal in others depending on the particular form of sexually transmitted disease.
Thinking about the impacts of the life circumstances of many women, an STI/STD infection is a serious issue. It can create a situation in which there is a reduction in the chance of the woman to pursue a life course free from stigma in many cultures, or with treatment in many others – some with both problems.
Thus, in regards to decision-making relevant to women’s health around STIs and STDs, women should have a front seat. There deserve to be a part, and the main one, of the conversation regarding their own health.
Because men may not necessarily know the collective experiences or circumstances of the majority of women within their own nation. Compassion and sympathy are certainly possible and the main bridge, but the representation of women in all levels of decision-making relevant to them is important for the proper development and implementation of programs and initiatives for reduction of the rates of STIs and STDs in women.
The next section looks at the laws and practices, thus legal and cultural. The laws of the land, historically and in the present, have been, can be, and are discriminatory against women in a variety of contexts.
This can even emerge in some of the more subtle forms with the restrictions on women’s explicit in the laws. It is a discrimination via omission in this sense. There can be brutal social and cultural practices too.
Take, for an extreme example, the ‘corrective’ rape of women, even lesbians, who simply do not conform to the sexual orientation of the dominant heterosexual culture in which they find themselves. These women, in particular, can be subjected to a form of rape thought, within in the culture – wrongly, to shift the sexual orientation of the woman to one of like heterosexual men.
Simply does not work, isn’t the case, and can, sometimes, leave these women, through no fault of their own, infected with HIV/AIDS, it devastates their lives and leaves them as third-class citizens within their countries, where before they already harboured minimal consideration as human beings.
It is this form of culture and the surrounding laws that may not permit it but, certainly, do not openly condemn and punish it, which is the problem. There should be a shift in global culture seeping into the national legislation, policies, and practices in order to instantiate the enfranchisement of women as global citizens equal in stature and worth to the men.
The idea posited in the UDHR and in the Utilitarian ethic of John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill, and enshrined in the work of the mainstay ethics of the religions in the world, in the ethical precepts or principles, found in the Golden Rule. If men would like to enjoy treatment as human beings, then women reserve the same right to enjoyment to treatment as persons.
For those women and girls already affected by HIV/AIDS, this, certainly, can hinder their advancement in a number of domains in life; however, the change in the global culture can be a significant step to the introduction of the practical realities of the equality of women and girls, of the equality of women and girls. Nothing to it besides that simple ask.
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- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
- Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
- The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3, Article 7, and Article 13.
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).
- Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979).
- Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984).
- The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
- Beijing Declaration(1995).
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
- Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
- The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).
- Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence or the Istanbul Convention (2011) Article 38 and Article 39.
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Photo by David Calderón on Unsplash