Women’s Rights Linked With AIDS Epidemic In Africa

In a post in the Open Society Foundations blog, Tamar Ezer, a senior program officer in the law and health initiative of the group’s public health program, examines the relationship between women’s rights and AIDS in Africa, writing, “Women in Africa are routinely deprived of rights to land, property, and housing — a situation contributing to, and worsened by, the AIDS epidemic.” She notes, “Last month, however, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the main regional human rights body in Africa) [took] a stand on the side of justice,” and she highlights two resolutions urging countries to “‘protect and promote women’s right to land and property’ and ‘to put in place mechanisms to ensure that women living with HIV are not subjected to coercion, pressure or undue inducement by health care providers … in order to secure consent for sterilization'” (12/16).

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