In Her Own Words: Violations of Women's Human Rights and HIV
August 14, 2006
XVI International AIDS Conference
Toronto, Canada

Remarks by Anandi Yuvaraj and Anjali Gopalan

Available in Word and PDF

Anandi Yuvaraj: I would like to start from where Paulette…she talked about the prison setting. And, to me, I think there are millions of such prisons where women are imprisoned in developing countries and for us, marriage itself is a prison. So I would like to really highlight how, within the marriage, how we are considered, and we are subjected to all kinds of violence.

I do agree, the exposure to knowledge and information…access to information, and access to rights, and access to treatment—all that—yes, it makes a difference. But in our lives, for women living with HIV, this has made a difference after we are infected, not before we are infected…so whatever has changed, made a difference, is after forced infection. That's why I think, and many of my colleagues will also agree with me that, you know, many Indian women who are infected have a pre-infection and post-infection, like "before Christ" and "after Christ," kind of a thing in our lives. Before infection, we didn't have access and we got infected and after we got infected our husbands died and we were left alone and we didn't have any access. And then we got access through the support groups and that's how we learned about the infection and how to cope with the infection and to support each other. That has really empowered us but it is a pity that this empowerment has come very late in our lives, which I think we are entitled as women in the world. The rights we are born with in the world are not really given to us.

So to me, I think it's very important that women living with HIV are facing a lot of violence. I would like to share my personal experience. I'm a person living with the virus for the last eight years. When we got my HIV status in 1997, I decided…there wasn't any ART in development in 1997 in India, so I chose not to get pregnant, whereas my husband was very keen and he forced me and I was subjected to all kinds of violations. And in order to exercise my right not to have a child…there was a lot of problems, I had to go to court to seek legal protection. And I couldn't go anywhere. I couldn't go to my native family. I couldn't go to any neighbors. I couldn't. They shut the doors. I had to flee from my husband's place to the doorsteps of the legal person. So that was the final kind of thing…I was forced to take that step because of the violence of the experience—well, physically and the emotional violence. Many of my colleagues have also experienced such violence. I would like to stop here. Maybe Anjali would like to -

Charlayne Hunter-Gault: Just before Anjali begins I would just like to remind everyone - as you've just heard so graphically—we are hearing in the voices of women here today stories of violations of women's human rights and HIV and we also are hearing of possible ways to deal with those. So I just want for those who have joined us in the back of the room to know what we are doing up here.

Anjali Gopalan: I think it would be interesting to talk a little bit about the structural adjustments that need to happen to deal with issues for women living with HIV and also for children. I'd like to talk about kids because they always get left out of the equation.

But I think we have some very basic problems. And where do we start? Right from the fact that there are issues around nevirapine being given to women during delivery. Women not having access to safe delivery. There's no sex education in schools. The fact is that girls are dropping out of schools. It's not just HIV. It's a larger issue. What about younger and younger women who are married off and come in positive and that's when the infection gets caught? Anandi's story is not uncommon. Very often the number of women who end up-and therefore we need to look at legal issues-the number of women who get thrown out of their homes after they've taken care of husbands who have died and then the family throws them out. So I think if we could kind of start looking at where these structural changes need to happen, and then if we could talk a little bit about the fact that…we don't have laws to protect women in these kinds of situations. Maybe Anandi can talk a little bit about it.

AY: We don't have laws…yes, there are no laws and policies in place.
Before I talk about that I would like to say here the responses so far, how it has been…the responses to address the feminization that are conceived and designed and implemented need to be changed. To me, I think, the responses are not really women-friendly, women-centric responses. Everything is around men, any response is in relation to men, but not as women as an entity. I would see that the responses need to be changed and need to be completely conceived and designed in order to really, solely address, from a woman's perspective…recognize women as a separate entity.

Why I'm saying that is…if you look at the responses so far…PMTCT is after infection and once you are infected, and that is also targeting the children and not for women. So where are we getting interventions in our lifestyles? There are no programs to address us. [Applause]

You know, everything in our society, it's you know, women should get married, and then get married. Before marriage, there are no programs for us, so how do we empower? We talk about empowerment a lot; we hear about empowerment. Where are the empowerment programs? What part do you think we can intervene? And you don't want to talk about sex and you don't want to talk about any…you know, these are taboo issues. And why do you suddenly expect women to talk about condoms within the marriage when they were never exposed to this kind of talk and dialogues before the marriage…and you expect them to talk about condom negotiation? That to me is unacceptable.

There are some fortunate developments now in India in terms of access to property rights, there is the Hindu Succession Act. Now women can inherit property like men. This is a very latest and recent legislative amendment that has been made. The Protection from Domestic Violence Act also recognizes this and this is the first of its kind in India. Under this Act, a woman can seek protection even before she is violated. If she personally felt that she was going to be violated, and she has the fear, she can seek protection. That provision has been made very, very recently and it is not come into force, so I think it is a positive development, but the problems are with implementation of such laws.

AG: And I think I'll just take a few seconds to say one thing—that if we're really looking at empowerment, we have to look at it through a larger lens. We cannot just go in with HIV prevention. Right from the time girls are young is when we need to start talking about these issues. And empowerment-unless you create an environment to sustain empowerment, it's not going to happen. By empowerment, I mean legal as well as social. Without that, if you're going to have infanticide, if you are going to have girl children killed, if girl children are not going to go to school, if you're going to leave men out of this debate…that too is problematic. Please understand, because ultimately it's the men who make decisions. [Applause] So we cannot leave them out of this equation. Thank you.

CHG: Let me just ask you a quick question, because I've found, in Malawi, for example, where I looked at the issue of girls' education, that one of the big problems there was that most of the teachers were men, and young girls had a very hard time relating to them, talking about their issues and the men had a hard time relating to them. What is the situation in India? 

AG: There are a lot of female teachers. But the issue is that these teachers are not trained to deal with a lot of issues that young people will bring up. So there is that kind of barrier that exists between the teacher who is seen as a figure of authority, and therefore not someone that you can end up speaking to about this.