This report argues the need to adopt a rights-based approach to counter gender inequality, violence against women and other violations of women’s rights, in order to combat the HIV and AIDS pandemic effectively. It explores obstacles to universal access to prevention, treatment, care and support for all women and girls. It illustrates the ongoing violations of women’s rights by the actions and inactions of those setting policies, providing funding, offering services and implementing programmes. It further provides working solutions and best practices for overcoming those obstacles. These strategies were gathered through research studies conducted in 13 countries: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, South Africa, Vanuatu and Zimbabwe
This paper summarises issues raised by a meeting to discuss the contribution of abstinence-only HIV & AIDS education and presents the key arguments for and against abstinence-only education that were presented at the meeting. It was developed on behalf of the Working Group on Education and HIV/AIDS, in the UK Consortium on AIDS and International Development
Challenges conventional wisdom that teaching life skills to young people would reduce HIV infection. The paper suggests that: there is disagreement about the definition of life skills; the introduction of life skills in the curriculum often creates problems, particularly in the schools of poorer countries; and that life skills are action-oriented, and may be alien to cultural contexts where people, especially the youth, are not encouraged to choose. While the paper does not intend to undermine the importance of life skills-based education in HIV contexts, its cautious and critical analysis may provide a useful tool for the improvement of related initiatives