By Susana T. Fried, Neelanjana Mukhia and Shamillah Wilson

Around the world today, women and girls are at an alarming and growing risk of HIV infection as a result of their persisting social, cultural and economic subordination, as well as pervasive violence in their homes, communities, schools, workplaces, streets, markets, police stations and hospitals. Yet, national and global AIDS responses have yet to comprehensively address this deadly intersection.

The UNGASS Declaration of Commitment (DoC) on HIV/AIDS, adopted by all UN member states in 2001, provided what was intended to be a comprehensive framework to halt and to reverse the HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2010, and included specific and measurable milestones for 2003, 2005 and 2010. To a certain extent, it includes commitments relating to addressing gender inequality in the context of the HIV epidemic, but much more work needs to be done to translate this into concrete steps that grapple with the intersection of gender inequality and HIV, in general, and violence against women and girls, in particular.

With regard to the DoC and the commitment by governments to reach universal access to prevention, treatment, care and support by 2010, governments are requested to report on progress they have made towards setting ambitious targets for the mid-point of the process - i.e. 2008.

Susana T. Fried is a consultant on gender, sexuality and human rights
advocacy, research, training and program development. Susana has
worked for over twenty years on women's rights, focusing on gender and
human rights, with an emphasis on sexuality and rights, ending
violence against women and developing intersectional human rights
advocacy and practices. She is currently a Senior Consultant to the
Women Won't Wait: End HIV and violence against women and girls. Now.
campaign Both the UNGASS DoC review and the universal access target setting processes are well underway and they contain commitments to involving civil society. Governments are expected to submit to UNAIDS the country progress report on the implementation of the DoC by January 31st, 2008. The country progress reports are meant to reflect reviews and input from all national stakeholders, government and civil society, in what UNAIDS calls the "joint responsibility" of national reporting. However, civil society in general, and women's groups in particular are often not adequately involved.

For this 16 days of activism against gender violence campaign, we call on women's rights-seeking organizations to engage in advocacy now to ensure that gender inequality, women's health and human rights, and violence against women and girls are core considerations in setting targets and goals at the national and global levels as part of the universal access mid-point review.

The Women Won't Wait campaign has produced an Advocacy Toolkit to inform women's health and rights, human rights and AIDS groups about the opportunities to be involved in national and global reviews of national AIDS responses, particularly the government reports at the "mid-point" review of the universal access process, set in motion at the UN General Assembly Special Session Review that took place in June 2006 (available at womenwontwait.org. See also ICASO's excellent advocacy documents at icaso.org).

The participation of civil society organizations with experience and commitment to challenging gender inequality, promoting human rights and especially those working at the intersection of violence against women and girls and HIV&AIDS, are critical to ensuring that the lethal intersection of HIV and violence against women and girls is integrated into the process of monitoring and reporting on national and global AIDS responses.

Neelanjana Mukhia is the International Women's Rights Policy and
Campaign Coordinator at ActionAid's international secretariat in
Johannesburg. She manages the international secretariat of the Women
Won't Wait:  End HIV and Violence Against Women and Girls Now
campaign. The universal access process represents an unprecedented opportunity to address the twin pandemics of HIV and violence against women and girls, and the deeply embedded gender inequality that fuels them. Strategies to ensure accountability regarding violence against women and girls - through the development and inclusion of country and global targets and indicators - can help ensure that aspects of gender-based discrimination and gender-based violence are an integral part of the global AIDS response. In order to do so, they must fully incorporate the participation of women and girls, and, in particular women and other people living with HIV&AIDS.