University of Zambia Medical Library

Role of Women NGOs in the Fight Against Aids in Africa: Challenges and Hopes

by Eka Esu-Williams, President: Society for Women and AIDS in Africa

The Society for Women and AIDS in Africa (SWAA), a regional network based in 28 African countries is one of many NGOs formed by women to respond to the epidemic. SWAA provides the springboard for women to speak out and act in order to deal with the specific and general factors influencing women's susceptibility to HIV/AIDS and to coordinate a regional response based on the implementation of country-relevant programs. Where women have organized against HIV/AIDS, they have identified the specific needs to be addressed, the barriers they encounter, their allies and the ways in which to engage their support and mobilize required resources. They have also been empowered at community and family levels to provide care and support, challenge stereotypes which portray women as transmitters of HIV and advocate for the rights of women. They have assisted in creating more compassion and support for people living with HIV/AIDS. Theys have continued to advocate for change of traditional and cultural practices which impede the ability of women and girls to prevent HIV infection, and have promoted those practices which offer women protection and enhance their ability to cope with the impact of AIDS.

Many women's NGOs are encouraging a wide range of community-based groups to incorporate HIV/AIDS into their programs and are actively building partnerships and participation with men and their groups to ensure the development and implementation of gender sensitive programs. Furthermore, they are promoting networking with people living with HIV/AIDS in order to make their plight better understood and to ensure their active participation in programming. Through the work of women's NGOs, individuals and groups are supported in ways that allow communities to develop skills for implementing realistic programs and strategies on HIV/AIDS. A particular demand to women's NGOs is the need of strengthen family cohesion through formulating appropriate sexuality communication strategies between parents and children. Parents themselves also need to be encouraged to engage positively in sexual dialogue to promote responsible sexual behavior. It is crucial that the responsibility of addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic is shared by both parents in order to rmodify the social construction of gender and to redefine sexual behavior. There is a dire need to review and amend laws contributing to women's vulnerability, advocating for the implementation of existing laws, policies and practices which protect women and girls. In addition, actions taken at national level are often inappropriate and late in coming because of ineffective mechanisms for deciphering emerging trends in the epidemic.

Women's NGOs can assist by ensuring that the needed data are collected, by contributing their experience towards reviewing on going and developing programs targeting women and adolescents. They can build upon their various experiences to set a regional agenda for Africa which responds more productively to HIV/AIDS and the needs of women and adolescents, particularly at the grassroots. This agenda of necessity will speak to the socio-economic factors which predispose women and girls to HIV/AIDS. Program development and implementation have been based mainly on narrowly defined goals which often do little to help women and girls.

The issues of women and AIDS in Africa are not those of women in the West because of differing social, economic and cultural factors. Of particular concern to African women is the need to reduce the rates of perinatal transmission of HIV and the high prevalence of HIV infection in adolescent girls. Women's NGOs must position themselves in a way that ensures that international attention and action are given to these and that women in Africa can benefit from new findings which are potentially effective for prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS. Thus women's NGOs commited to the fight against HIV/AIDS call upon the newly created UN co-sponsored program, UNAIDS, to acknowledge and respond to the various dimensions and peculiarities of the epidemic as it relates to women and adolescents in Africa.

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Last updated September 9, 1997

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