By Sophie Dilmitis, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) and HIV Coordinator, World YWCA, an AIDS 2010 Organizing Partner

For the last four years, the World YWCA, which represents a constituency of 25 million women and girls, has served on the AIDS 2008 and 2010 Conference Coordinating Committee (CCC). As our time on the CCC comes to an end, we share our expectations for the conference and what remains to be done to continue to put women and girls on the agenda of the International AIDS Conference (IAC) and beyond.

The World YWCA delegation participates in the Women's March at AIDS 2008.

I remember attending my first IAC and how it radically changed my life ten years ago. I was a young woman recently diagnosed with HIV and not connected to the global AIDS movement. I had not disclosed my HIV status – nor had I ever met an activist or many people who were open about their HIV status.  My experience at the IAC became my springboard to disclosing my status and becoming an AIDS and women’s rights activist.

The World YWCA strives to ensure that community women, especially young women and women living with HIV, have this same opportunity at AIDS 2010. We know how women, especially community women, may benefit from the immense opportunity that this conference offers to change lives, shift perceptions, and increase knowledge and advocacy on HIV, as well as to provide a space to share their own important life experiences.

As an organisation we see an unfinished agenda not only within the conference but globally. We strive to ensure that women, young women and girls are treated as equal citizens around the world. The conference theme is Rights Here, Right Now – we strive for women’s right to be recognised as human rights.

In many situations around the world, women's rights are violated explicitly simply because of their sex. In some countries, despite the great number of women farmers and as single heads of households, women still struggle to assert their rights to inherit property or to own land.  With so many AIDS-related deaths this creates an additional burden on women. In other countries, women and girls do not have the same access to economic or educational opportunities as their male peers. Across the globe, women and girls are disproportionately impacted by human rights abuses such as violence and human trafficking. This situation not only erodes the dignity of individual women and girls but also inhibits the progress and prosperity of entire communities.

According to UNAIDS, “HIV programmes and policies do not sufficiently address the specific realities and needs of women and girls, or fail to respect and protect their human rights. Service providers, for example, often treat women disrespectfully and reinforce stigma. Few HIV services provide essential sexual and reproductive health care and HIV-positive women are often pressured, or even forced, not to have children as a requirement for AIDS treatment.” Read more here.

As the Women’s Funding Network notes, “When women are empowered to assert their human rights, whole communities gain in terms of accelerated progress: skills are upgraded, economies are revitalised, families and society are safer. When women's rights are respected as human rights, previously invisible human rights violations are brought to centre stage.” As, for example, when so many women living with HIV around the world who access abortion services in countries where it is legal continue to be coerced into sterilization.

As we move into this conference, the World YWCA calls for accountability. At AIDS 2010 we will focus on human rights and continue to channel the global focus on universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support.  We will advocate for: 

• universal access: this is only universal if the rights of young women and women living with HIV are upheld 
• investing in comprehensive HIV prevention strategies, that are grounded in sexual and reproductive health and rights and address violence against women
• ensuring that all AIDS responses promote and build on young women’s leadership
• an end to stigma and discrimination.

The World YWCA will have a delegation of 24 women at AIDS 2010 that includes 12 young women under the age of 30 and five women living with HIV.  We will:

• share our work on sexual and reproductive health and rights and HIV and AIDS with the global AIDS community
• influence the policy debates and impact programmes at the country level, through highlighting of local perspectives, to ensure women’s voices are heard at the international level 
• ensure capacity building by widening knowledge and understanding of successes and challenges in HIV programming 
• build on the momentum of the 2007 International Women’s Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, AIDS 2008, and regional AIDS conferences, and promote the World YWCA’s 2011 International Women’s Summit on “Women Creating a Safe World” in Zurich, Switzerland
• make young women and HIV-positive women visible at the conference.

Please come and visit us in the Exhibition Hall at the World YWCA booth (#902), which will explore the concept of Safe Spaces for Women, Young Women and Girls (Next to the “Wish Tree”) or visit us online at the World YWCA.

Sophie Dilmitis can be reached at: sophie.dilmitis@worldywca.org.