Why the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS?

The Global Coalition on Women and AIDS has been created to: address the increasing global impact of AIDS on women and girls; to help meet a series of ambitious international targets; to support the wider global AIDS response; to improve prevention activity for women and girls, and to address severe societal and legal inequities which compound the impact of HIV and AIDS on women and girls.

In more detail the Coalition seeks to:

• Address the increasing global impact of AIDS on women and girls

The latest epidemiological figures show that AIDS is having an ever-increasing impact on women and girls, highlighting the inadequacy of efforts to date.

• Help meet a series of ambitious international targets

The UN Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS, adopted by the General Assembly Special Session on AIDS in 2001, provides a series of progressive, measurable targets to tackle HIV and AIDS - many relate directly to women and girls. Most of these targets are set for 2005 and need extra effort and attention if they are to be met.

• Support the wider global AIDS response

As a result of the devastating impact of the epidemic on women and girls, progress in many other areas of the response to AIDS relies on what is done for women and girls today. They will be key to driving the response tomorrow.

• Improve prevention activity for women and girls

Feedback from women's groups suggests that prevention programmes based on the ABC approach (Abstain, Be Faithful, and Consistently Use Condoms) frequently do not recognize the realities faced by many women. Women and girls often cannot choose to abstain from sex or insist on condom use, they are often coerced into unprotected sex, and are often infected by husbands in societies where it is common or accepted for men to have more than one partner.

• Address severe societal and legal inequities which compound the impact of HIV and AIDS on women and girls

Women and girls are disadvantaged by society in a number of ways that men are not. HIV and AIDS make these inequities worse and life threatening. Women face particular challenges in the areas of property rights, through limited access to education, limited access to care and treatment and when violence against women is tolerated.