UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

UNAIDS The First 10 Years216their support for the GCWA. Obaid called for efforts to empower women and promote theirrights. She quoted a representative of women living with HIV who said: “What will kill usmore than AIDS is despair. Please give us hope”.The coalition was welcomed as a much-needed initiative but there was concern that likesimilar bodies, it might produce more words than action. Marta Mauras, who had left theOffice of the Deputy Secretary-General for the Economic Commission for Latin America andthe Caribbean, said: “I think the Global Coalition of Women still has to find its way. What it’sdone for now [is] to create … a very important network throughout the world … [but] nowcomes the litmus test, ‘so fine, now what about it, we have this network, we have some veryprominent people attached to it and what are we going to do about it?’” However, Maurasstressed that the coalition has highlighted, notably at the Bangkok AIDS Conference in 2004and Toronto in 2006, the very important work being done on inheritance rights and property,and on violence against women.“What willkill us more thanAIDS is despair.Please give ushope”.Kaleeba also said: “I think it is a good start but, like all global initiatives, it still needs to belocalized”. She explained that countries need their own national plans and projects, specificto the needs of their women, such as shelters for abused women.However, by 2005, the GCWA had begun to provide catalytic funds to United NationsThemeGroups in a number of countries, to strengthen the gender components of National AIDSStrategies, and to promote the inclusion of women’s groups in civil society forums onAIDS.Country programmes for womenThe growing impact of the epidemic on girls and women had become increasingly obviousin Kenya, explained Kristan Schoultz, who was UNAIDS Country Coordinator in Kenya fromJuly 2003 to April 2007. As well as being part of Kenya’s surveillance data, the 2003 demographicand health survey included a module on AIDS and on gender violence: this revealedvery high levels of violence towards women and “incredible rates of rape, violent rape, andassault”. She explained: “What the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS brought to us inKenya was the language and the tools to start focusing on sexual violence as one of the keymodes of HIV transmission”.The UN Theme Group in Kenya has, with the help of UNAIDS Programme AccelerationFunds, supported a joint UN advocacy programme on women, girls and AIDS. As Schoultzexplained, this has brought together women involved in AIDS with others involved in moretraditional “women in development” programmes. “What was striking to us was how thesetwo groups of women had not been collaborating, that the machine that is the nationalresponse to AIDS was not interacting with those dealing with women and development