The Primate's World Relief and Development Fund: Stories

Time to Deliver: The XVI International AIDS Conference August 14, 2006

Susie Henderson

Isabella Henry joins the Women and Girls Rally at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto

Why we took our daughter to the HIV AIDS Women and Girls' Rally

Before it was even seven o'clock this morning we lifted our 2 year old girl from her bed and into her stroller to join the people who gathered downtown in a rally for women and girls affected by HIV AIDS.  The event was organized as a part of the International AIDS Conference currently underway in Toronto. As we made our way to the gathering I considered why we were going.

The cause itself is one of the most critical challenges facing humanity.  Last year 3 million people died of AIDS and the World Health Organization estimates that half of the 39 million people infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) today are women.   But beyond this statistic, men and women do not face this crisis equally.  There is no one cause, but around the world, the wildfire that is the HIV AIDS epidemic is fueled by gender inequality. 

As long as women have less advantage in the world -- less sexual choice, less prevention methods, less nutrition, less health care, less education, less housing, less protection under the law, less entitlement to benefit from wealth and property, less access to decision-making -- combined with MORE responsibility for the care of the community care and more risk of violence -- they will continue to bear the brunt of the enormous burden of this disease.  Stephen Lewis summed it up this morning when he said that there have been positive changes in the global fight against AIDS, but that at its root gender discrimination remained as intransigent as  HIV itself. 

The panel of speakers that rallied the crowd reflected the way forward.  HIV positive women claimed their rightful role in the front of the line.  The global network of HIV positive women have put out a daily challenge to the conference. Aboriginal women demanded a place at the decision- making table. African women revealed their anger at the devastation that has ravaged their families.  Sex trade workers included their voices.  Mary Robinson, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights challenged the women's movement to identify with each other, to see the common vision of women's struggle for justice. 

Stephen Lewis put forward the hope that perhaps this conference will be a turning point for how the world confronts the AIDS crisis and that from this point forward women's rights will be central to the cause.  That hope echoed through the crowd.

Our little one, after a bit of a grumpy start, climbed up on my shoulders and enjoyed the chanting of the crowd and the colours of the banners as people moved along the street. She blew on her whistle and later on sang her own songs through the Global Village public forum space.  My hope is that she continues to find the courage to step forward to take on the world's biggest challenges, to add her own voice to the crowds of justice-seeking people in the streets, to draw from her faith and be inspired by others who are making a difference.  Perhaps in her lifetime she will be able to say that both HIV AIDS and women's inequality are a thing of the past.   

More Information
Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance -faith-based coverage of the IAC.

International Community of Women Living with HIV and AIDS - ICW is the only global organisation of women living with HIV, run by positive women for positive women.

Genderandaids.org -  a site developed by UNIFEM and UNAIDS for research, materials and exchange on the gender dimensions of the HIV AIDS epidemic