Women's Project: Addressing the Interlinkages Between Culture, Gender Based Violence, HIV and AIDS and Women’s Rights
Zimbabwe like other Southern African countries is being confronted with two epidemics, that is HIV and AIDS and gender based violence. When gender based violence is combined with HIV and AIDS, the two scourges are more lethal than viewed as mutually exclusive. While women's organizations in Zimbabwe have been active in advocating for the rights of the women and the girl child, socially and economically, there has been a clear lack of linking these rights with gender based violence, culture and HIV and AIDS. It is against this background that SAfAIDS is carrying out a project of strengthening the capacity of women's organizations to address the interlinkages between culture, gender based violence, HIV and AIDS and women's rights. The objectives of the project are to;
- Raise awareness of women's organizations on the linkages between culture, gender based violence, women's rights and HIV and AIDS.
- Document and disseminate information of programmes that have successfully integrated culture, gender based violence, women's rights and HIV and AIDS as best practices.
- Promote policy debate and dialogue among policy debate and dialogue among policy makers, women leaders and civil society on the key issues affecting women and cultural norms that promote gender based violence and HIV and AIDS.
Achievements
The project has identified ten partners from womens groups including one men's group to work with, in the project,
- A partners briefing meeting was held and partners given an oversight of the project objectives and what they were expected to do. A detailed workshop report is available
- A training manual for trainers on culture GBV women's rights and HIV was developed and pre-tested at a three day training workshop attended by 20 participants from the selected 10 partners. A workshop report is available
- A poster targeting women's organisation in service delivery focusing on the Rao and Keller Model was developed and 2000 copies of the poster are being distributed.
- The documentation of best practices is underway with the call having been put out for partners to submit their best practices documents. A selection process has already started and projects are being assessed based upon a given criteria. Those selected will be documented as best practises for circulation in the country and region and beyond.
Way forward
The training manual is under review now with feed back from the Training of Trainer's workshop for finalisation. Once it is revised 2000 copies will be printed and distributed to partners working with women for use in their own local level trainings. Four policy dialogues are planned for July in four provincial towns to discuss the topic:
Harmonising modern and, traditional laws and practices, to reduce the risk of GBV, HIV and AIDS amongst women in Zimbabwe. A policy brief will be produced at the end of the dialogues for advocacy on women's issues that will have emerged from the dialogues. The project will be completed, all things being equal end of August 2008.
| Attachment | Size |
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| Kelleher_Poster.pdf | 867.46 KB |
