Workshop focuses on gender aspects of HIV

HIV/AIDS … it’s been around for over two decades and the way the situation looks, it’ll be with us for quite a while. According to UNAIDS statistics, at the end of 2006 there were thirty-nine point five million people worldwide infected with HIV and seventeen point seven million of them are women … which is why this week thirty Belizeans have been participating in a workshop to integrate gender analysis into HIV/AIDS programmes to make their campaigns more effective. The workshop is a collaborative effort between the National AIDS Commission and the United Nations Development Fund for Women, UNIFEM. Monique Springer, Programme Associate for Gender and HIV/AIDS at UNIFEM, today told News Five why the sessions are important.

Monique Springer, Programme Assoc. for HIV/AIDS, UNIFEM
“We are giving them tools in basic gender analysis concepts and also how to integrate these concepts into their programmes and policies, what we are calling gender mainstreaming.”

“In the Caribbean, HIV is mainly transmitted through sexual activity, and sexual activity is very much a gendered behaviour if the sexual activity occurs between men and women in heterosexual relationships or between men and men in same sex relationships and as well women and women in same sex relationships. So we need to understand the gender causes and consequences of what’s fuelling the epidemic in the Caribbean to be able to address, to have a more holistic and responsive programmes to address the problems.”

Dolores Balderamos Garcia, Chair, National AIDS Commission
“We have the challenge of prevention, and then we have the challenge of care, treatment and support of persons living with HIV/AIDS, and thirdly we have the huge challenge of stigma and discrimination. Now, knowing that we have those challenges and knowing that gender is the relationships between those men and women and the learned behaviours in relation to how girls and women should behave and how boys and men should behave and issues of sexuality, human rights, these are issues that are being examined because we really believe that if we take this approach it will better equip all our persons that are stakeholders in the field to be able to do the work.”

UNIFEM’s project, “Capacity Building for Mainstream Gender Analysis in HIV/AIDS Programming in the Caribbean” has already been implemented in five Caribbean countries.