>>Download IWHC's Briefing Note on the Compact (PDF)

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The global response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic is failing. Even as millions more people living with HIV/AIDS have access to treatment, the number of new infections continues to rise. Absent a massive strengthening of prevention efforts, particularly for women and girls, the number of people infected and the number who will need treatment will continue to rise relentlessly.

For more than two decades, IWHC and its colleagues worldwide have helped to shape international policy to ensure the health and rights of women and girls.

A group of women advocates reflecting diverse substantive and geographic perspectives and decades of expertise in HIV/AIDS, sexual and reproductive health, sexuality, gender, and human rights developed a consensus agenda: With Women Worldwide—A Compact to End HIV/AIDS.

The Compact to End HIV/AIDS recognizes that sexual and reproductive rights are a pivotal but neglected priority in HIV/AIDS policy, programming, and resource allocation. Failure to protect girls' and women's rights—including their right to health and their right to live free of sexual coercion and violence—fuels the pandemic. Universal access to sexual and reproductive health services and education, and protection of sexual and reproductive rights, are essential to ending it.

With Women Worldwide aims to support the redesign of HIV/AIDS policies and programs and generate new political and financial support to empower girls and women to protect themselves against HIV and AIDS. Currently this initiative engages over 300 supporters from 50 countries and seven constituencies:

• Global and local leaders in HIV/AIDS;
• People living with HIV;
• Human rights advocates and organizations;
• Women’s rights leaders;
• Youth leaders and organizations;
• Sexual and reproductive rights and health organizations; and
• Faith-based organizations.

Compact supporters and IWHC use the consensus agenda to guide intergovernmental negotiations and in collaboration with UNAIDS, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, donor governments, the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS, national AIDS control programs, and other nongovermental organizations. 

>>Download an analysis of "universal access" by GESTOS, CARE, Open Society Institute (OSI), and SOIS Institute

>>Read the Call to Commitment issued by With Women Worldwide on July 30, 2008 prior to the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, calling for universal access to sexual and reproductive health services and education, and protection of sexual and reproductive rights, to prevent new infections in women and girls.