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

The full transcript is available in Word and PDF

To view the webcast, visit the Global Village website

Panelist profiles are available in Word and PDF


At the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto, the International Women's Health Coalition (IWHC), International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (ICW), and Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) organized the tribunal "In Her Own Words: Violations of Women's Human Rights and HIV."

Through the words of six panelists—HIV+ women activists and policy analysts—a clear picture of the rights violations that have led to women's disproportionate vulnerability to HIV/AIDS emerged. Moderated by Charlayne Hunter-Gault, the three pairs of panelists identified where policy or programmatic interventions would make a difference in terms of HIV status, treatment and community response. 

Each panelist presented a unique story, voice and perspective…

Paulette Nicholas & Judith Auerbach, United States 

"…Nothing for people living with HIV is anything that anyone makes easy, and it's even worse in a prison setting."
—Paulette Nicholas, Lighthouse Counseling Center, Inc.

"The reality of HIV-positive women generally, and particularly in prison, is the intersection of race, class, and sex and gender in the United States."
—Judith D. Auerbach, amfAR

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 Sophie Dilmitis & Lynde Francis, Zimbabwe

"Because I live with HIV and because I saw the yawning gap between what young people were being told and what they were being given, in 2001 I started the youth prevention program called Choose Life."
—Sophie Dilmitis, World YWCA

"Sophie and I are still the only two white women in Zimbabwe to have gone public with our status and yet there are hundreds and hundreds of white women who are positive but they are still closeted because of the history of racial tension in Zimbabwe and in some ways the racial privilege that we have."
—Lynde Francis, The Centre

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Anandi Yuvaraj & Anjali Gopalan, India

“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?” 
—Anandi Yuvaraj, India HIV/AIDS Alliance

"If we're really looking at empowerment, we have to look at it through a larger lens…and unless you create an environment to sustain empowerment, it's not going to happen."
—Anjali Gopalan, The Naz Foundation (India) Trust

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Q & A

Following the initial presentations, a Q&A session touched on many of the most pertinent issues surrounding the global HIV/AIDS response…

"Yes, discrimination is a big issue in HIV…the AIDS service organizations are white, they get funding and they service white communities. Often times, African Americans are forced out of care because of the treatment, the stigma…they are not accepted and looked upon with dignity or treated with respect." Read more>>
—Paulette Nicholas

"For the longest time, the infection in a couple of states in the northeast [of India] were seen as being driven through intravenous drug use, forgetting that these men also had female partners and were having sex." Read more>>
—Anjali Gopalan

"The biggest factor in the infection of very young women [in Zimbabwe] is actually cross-generational sex." Read more>>
—Lynde Francis

"One of the frustrations that I think many of us who have been working in HIV and AIDS, and consider ourselves feminists, have felt is the lack of integration of HIV and AIDS issues among women and girls with general women's advocacy and women's policy, and even women's health." Read more>>
—Judith Auerbach

"I remember the then Minister of Health standing up in a workshop and saying, 'Well, yes, we have to be very careful about what kind of women we give these [female] condoms to' and he said 'the ladies of the night might get them and use them for more than one customer.' And I was so enraged, I stood up and I asked him, does he check what kind of men they give male condoms to, and could he tell me what the difference was between six men using one vagina and six men using one female condom?"
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—Lynde Francis

"There is still an attitude that once you are HIV positive, your whole love life is dead unless you happen to still have a partner." Read more>>
—Lynde Francis

"But what I think has to change—and I don't know how much pull Bill and Bill have in that—is that young women need to be able to access and enjoy their sexual and reproductive health and rights." Read more>>
—Sophie Dilmitis

"There is very concerted advocacy within the United States, in particular about what our government is doing …monitoring and seeing the impact of the policies that we have exported and sort of coerced other countries into adopting through the stick, or carrot, of money." Read more>>
—Judith Auerbach

"I have one message for the men here—please understand women and respect their feelings and respect their rights and protect their rights and ensure their rights."
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—Anandi Yuvaraj