1. What do we mean by the gender and rights dimension in the future response to HIV & AIDS?
Jessica Horn
Director of Programmes, AWDF
@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.

2. 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

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

4. Rise in religious fundamentalisms
Johannesburg, South Africa Kampala, Uganda Abuja, Nigeria 2015

5. 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, “Let’s get real: Female sexual pleasure and HIV prevention” . Open Democracy
“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)

6. 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)

7. 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

8. 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)

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