Dispatches from AIDS 2008: Strategies for Change

As part of the OSI Public Health Program activities at the 2008 International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, Juliana Rincón Parra of Global Voices is posting a series of dispatches on conference events that address the human rights and health needs of marginalized persons. Currently living in Colombia, Parra edits the Global Voices citizen media video section and teaches a course in emerging media at EAFIT University in Medellín. She also cofounded Otrabanda.org, an emerging media organization.

The pre-conference symposium organized by OSI, Strategies for Change: Breaking Barriers to HIV Prevention, Treatment and Care for Women, provided much food for thought. Insightful panelists spoke with true candor on important issues such as empowerment strategies, how lawmaking can be used to benefit women, how grassroots organizations can make, track, and spend money, and how to advance health care for women.

The panels were well rounded and I particularly enjoyed the diversity of the panelists: they had different takes on certain issues and this made the conversation flow and expand. It felt more like a conversation in someone's living room than a conference where you sit and hear people drone: it was quite lively and engaging.

The Empowerment panel touched on the different organizations that are giving women in various paths in life access to information, education, and tools to empower them to take control of their lives and the lives of those they care about.

An interesting point of this session was the importance of networking. Speakers from two very different groups, GROOTS Kenya and the U.S. sex worker network Desiree Alliance, said that contact with other women in similar situations has been a catalyst for change, particularly when combined with citizen media technologies such as blogs, videoblogs, and online presence in general.

Other issues addressed where how to reach women in certain populations and get them involved in activism to promote their issues: in the case of the STIGMA Foundation in Indonesia, most female drug users would rather be identified as "naughty" women for having multiple sex partners than as drug users because of the heavy stigmatization, and in the case of Desiree Alliance, women say they have less problems with police if they are identified as sex worker than as activists for sex worker rights. The groups on the panel are bridging this gap by selecting leaders who are members of the focus populations. Drug users or former drug users work for Stigma and reach out to other women in their situation, sex workers run the St. John's clinic for sex workers in San Francisco and grandmothers run the Swaziland for Positive Living project geared to informing grandmothers about care-giving strategies. An important step in getting people involved in activism is allowing them to participate with small acts of activism: writing one article, sending one email, informing others of activities, they don't necessarily have to jump right in.

The second panel, on legal strategies, focused on the main legal issues faced by women who are affected by HIV. Elena Reynaga, a sex worker from Argentina and coordinator of AMMAR, touched on a key point: as long as female sex workers are identified in the law by their profession and not as women, they will continue to be denied access to their basic human rights. The first step, she said, is to shoot down the prejudices towards sex workers, and let the laws that protect women in general cover them as well.

U.S. attorney Corinne Carey (who has researched integrated legal and harm reduction services in Ukraine), Catherine Mumma of the Kenya Ethical and Legal Issues Network on HIV/AIDS, and Sibongile Ndashe of Interights pointed to specific cases of women being empowered by their knowledge of laws that affect them, especially regarding inheritance laws: with knowledge of laws and the culture around how these laws are enforced (or ignored) they have been able to make changes. Elena added to this that more important than having lawyers offer legal services to women is having lawyers provide training and counseling for marginalized women, educating them on what they can do to make changes at a political level. Corinne completes the thought by expressing that most laws are made by men who ignore the complexity of women, and that it is vital to have more women participate fully in this process.

In the economic strategies panel, different initiatives stand out as innovative approaches. One particularly fascinating project was presented by Gabriela Leite of the Brazilian sex worker organization Davida: they've started a clothing line and are appearing in fashion shows and selling their wares, using a business approach to publicize safer sex messages and gain visibility for sex worker rights.

On another subject, Julia Kim speaks about microfinancing and how it is quite important in the development of women organizations and grassroots initiatives, but that it can't be worked on its own and must be in conjunction with other programs related to education, gender issues, violence, safer sex practices and harm reduction. This is exactly what the IMAGE project in South Africa does. The Malawi Health Equity Network discussed how they track money, by acting as a watchdog of the national government’s budget implementation for HIV/AIDS services.

The last panel was about advancing health care for women, featuring an interesting take on approaches to minimize HIV risk and potentially harmful behaviors. The MAMA+ project launched by Doctors of the World provides testing and ongoing counseling to pregnant women who test HIV positive. Aproase in Mexico has a clinic treating uterine prolapse, HPV, AIDS and other STDs for sex workers, run by sex workers, that has expanded into providing services to other populations since the sex worker clients are now leading healthier lives and are not in need of constant treatment. Dr. Suzanne Maman discussed studies focusing on disclosure of HIV status and enhanced post-test support for HIV positive and negative women in Durban, South Africa.

The whole day was full of many concepts I hadn't given much thought to previously, and it was certainly food for thought. One major theme is the presence of sex workers in prevention strategies and education of the population, a role I had no idea they were so involved in. The problems faced by widows in Africa to keep the land held by their deceased husbands was also unknown to me.

I would like to see more of these types of events, but with inclusion of transgender women the next time around. The sex worker advocates did touch on transgender issues, but I would like to have heard how the trans community deals with stigma, what strategies they are using for empowerment and their thoughts on managing money as well. We're all women in on this, are we not?