What do we mean by the gender and rights dimension in the future response to HIV & AIDS? Jessica Horn Director of Programmes, AWDF www.awdf.org @awdf01 International AIDS conference 2016 Jessica Horn is Director of Programmes at the African Women’s Development Fund, the continent’s first women’s rights fund, based in Accra, Ghana. She has worked for over 15 years supporting activist organisations, funders and the UN to deepen analysis, shape policy and funding, and refine interventions to defend women’s rights to health, bodily autonomy and freedom from violence. Through AWID’s Resisting and Challenging Religious Fundamentalisms initiative, she produced two monographs on the growth and impact of Christian fundamentalism on women’s rights in Africa and on HIV/AIDS policy. She is also the author of the Cutting Edge Pack on Gender and Social Movements (BRIDGE/ Institute for Development Studies) Jessica is a founding member of the African Feminist Forum working group and serves on the board of Urgent Action Fund–Africa. Prior to joining AWDF she worked as Senior Advisor to AIR (African Institute for Integrated Responses to Violence Against Women and HIV/AIDS) at the Stephen Lewis Foundation.

What we know HIV& AIDS is undeniably gendered Maps onto intersections of discriminations in women’s lives & lives of those marginalised by patriarchy HIV/AIDS is one of many concerns for women’s embodied lives There is no viable response without changing gender power relations Individual – Relational- Community –Societal Power within, power with, power to

Context we move into the future with Crisis in funding Shifting African demographics Plethora of policy frameworks

Rise in religious fundamentalisms Johannesburg, South Africa 2012 Kampala, Uganda 2014 Abuja, Nigeria 2015

Think holistically Think realistically To science: a vagina/a womb/ a vein To girls/ women: my hopes, my life choices, my stress, my lack of possibility, my agency, my poverty, my shame, my pride, my need for school fees, my parents, my siblings, my government, my partner, my cervical cancer, my TB, my nutrition, my job. Think realistically Masvaure, Tsitsi, 2011. “Let’s get real: Female sexual pleasure and HIV prevention” . Open Democracy 5050 https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/tsitsi-b-masvawure/let’s-get-real-female-sexual-pleasure-and-hiv-prevention “In reality sex is not always something that is ‘done’ to young women. Neither are young women always passive and reluctant participants in sexual encounters.” - Masvaure, Tstiti (2011)

Invest in approaches that support bodily autonomy & integrity Women-controlled technologies Services with full informed consent Affordable medicines / technologies & care …And beyond science & services Resource the accountability mechanisms Funding for women’s rights organisations (incl. sex worker, LBT, young women) Invest in community & societal level transformation (advocacy, norm change. shifting power)

Expand the knowledge/data pool Re-integrate our work Better link SRHR, HIV/AIDS, VAW, mental health & emotional wellbeing programming Consider economic injustice/agency Solidarity- sex workers, LGBTIQ Be responsive Adapt approaches/priorities to context Expand the knowledge/data pool Gender & age disaggregated data Qualitative research; participatory action-research Rights indicators and outcomes

Inspiring approaches SASA! trial – prevention of VAW and HIV/AIDS Community-based mobilisation raising consciousness around power/gender in Kampala, Uganda Impacts on both VAW and HIV/AIDS Violence 52% lower in communities using the SASA! approach. With 28% more women and men believe women have a right to refuse sex. Women surviving violence 3 x more likely to receive support 27% men had concurrent sexual partners vs 45% in control communities. (Abramsky et al, 2014)

Co-create a rights-filled world with her Boxgirls, Kenya