WAD Tanzania
The Sahiba Sisters Foundation tell us about the focus of their activities for World AIDS Day 2007 in Tanzania.
Young Women's Advocacy against GBV and HIV
“HIV and AIDS is not new to Sahiba Sisters Foundation. A number of our network members of various ages have succumbed to the disease”, reveals Salma Maoulidi, Executive Director of Sahiba Sisters Foundation. “Their stories and experiences have forced us to pay greater attention to questions of women's sexuality and vulnerability especially in an environment of violence, coercion and deprivation,” she adds.
Sahiba Sisters Foundation, a women's development network operating in 13 regions in Tanzania has been awarded a small HIV and AIDS advocacy grant from the Commonwealth Foundation to commemorate 16 days of activism for women on World AIDS Day. Sahiba plans to organize a two-day forum that will bring together 25 young women activists and leaders between the ages of 18 and 30 from different parts of Tanzania, to explore the intersection between HIV and Gender Based Violence (GBV).
The forum will look at how specific forms of violence put young women at risk of HIV infection and will develop advocacy strategies that seek to empower young women to advocate against GBV and HIV risks that threaten their development. It is hoped these strategies will be replicated across Africa.
Participants will have the opportunity to interact with the Executive Director of the Tanzania AIDS Commission, Ms. Fatma Mrisho, and learn about their HIV and AIDS policy and legal framework. Organisations like the Tanzania Media Women's Association (TAMWA) and the Women's Legal AIDS Centre (WLAC) who have been pivotal in the campaign against GBV will also be at hand to share advocacy experiences.
“We know that women are vulnerable to HIV infection because of an unequal power in the sexual relationship. Marriage practices disempower women and many become infected unknowingly,” explains Ms. Maoulidi, sharing an example of a young Sahiba member who was infected after being married off to an older man whose first wife had died from AIDS. Indeed in Africa, HIV positive women outnumber infected men by 2 million. Most HIV transmissions are through heterosexual contact. According to UNAIDS (2002), the majority of people with the virus in Tanzania are between 15-49 years with half of them becoming infected between the ages of 15 and 24 years.
The focus on young women is important considering that African women are infected at a younger age and at a faster rate than men. The Tanzania Health and Demographic Survey 2004 (THDS) estimates that 63% of women between 20 to 24 years have had sex by the time they are 18 compared to 43% of men at the same age. UNFPA (2000) estimates that girls between 15-19 years are five to six times more likely to be infected than boys their own age mainly as a result of high-risk sex with older men. Only 14% of youths between 15 to 24 years use a condom during their first sexual encounter.
“It is interesting that during their early and late teens young people in many traditional families receive some type of education about sexuality coinciding with initiation rites or marriage rites. Yet most HIV and AIDS related interventions we see locally do not sufficiently deal with issues of child and adolescent sexuality considering such interventions as taboo or inappropriate”, observes Ms. Maoulidi. “Nevertheless the high infection rates suggest that most young people do not know how to protect themselves against STDs and HIV. Further, it indicates a deficiency in life skills knowledge and options from the varied information sources available to youth about sexual and reproductive health issues. When this blurring of information is compounded with pervasive sexual messages in marketing strategies targeting young consumers its impact on youth social, political and sexual practices is formidable.
“The need for an open discussion about youth sexuality, therefore, becomes pertinent in existing HIV and AIDS programmes but meaningful engagement with the topic is convoluted by the reluctance at various levels to address questions of youth sexuality. Efforts by the government and AIDS activists to introduce sex education to young people in schools met strong opposition by religious leaders who claim moral force to define limits of permissibility in youth sexuality. Ironically the same leaders authorize under age girls to engage in sex if in a matrimonial set up!
“We are excited about this new initiative as it enables us to further our activism with and in empowering young women”, says Ms. Maoulidi. “We note that in ongoing discourses especially those that claim legitimacy from religious and cultural bases there is a tendency to de-emphasize women's sexual and personal rights. Thus while it is common to require a girl to be a virgin during her first marriage similar requirements are not imposed on men.
“Similarly, young women are not socialized to relate with their sexual and reproductive assets. Instead the main messages reinforced to young women in both traditional and modern mediums are of shame or surrender. Rarely is a woman's agency with regards sexual and reproductive health and rights acknowledged even by those voices that claim to act in her best interest.
“We hope that this forum provides a catalyst for young women to inform local GBV and HIV/AIDS advocacy strategies. Specifically the information and skills obtained will empower young women leaders and activists to identify and analyze how specific practices put them at risk of HIV/AIDS or gender violence and begin advocating for change against those practices using available mechanisms under the law.”
