Investigations
Gender-based Violence and Discrimination in Civil Society
Women around the world are targets of physical and psychological abuse because of their gender. Common violations of women's human rights are rape, domestic violence, genital cutting, sexual slavery, discrimination, trafficking, socio-political marginalization, inadequate access to health care and low economic status. As a result, women suffer a variety of medical problems including a high risk of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancy, reproductive dysfunction, scarring and serious gynecological problems, and trauma with symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder and depression.
Women and girls are also more likely to bear the burden of care for those suffering from AIDS, and to suffer disproportionate stigma and discrimination themselves when their HIV positive status becomes known. Biological factors increase a woman's susceptibility to infection.
The rate of HIV infection among women and girls has reached an alarmingly high level in sub-Saharan Africa, where about 57% of HIV-positive adults are women, and young women are about three times more likely than young men to be infected. Women and girls are particularly at risk of HIV infection due to a number of factors including: rape and domestic violence; marriage to older HIV-infected men; lack of education generally and about HIV prevention specifically; sex trafficking, poverty, discrimination in property and inheritance, and lack of access to formal employment; leading to a high rate of transactional sex, lack of power to negotiate condom use or abstinence with partners, and lack of female-controlled prevention methods such as the female condom and microbicides.
Physicians for Human Rights has investigated the link between gender-based discrimination and health.
In Thailand, PHR studied the manner in which human rights violations committed against Burmese migrant and hill-tribe women and girls in Thailand render them vulnerable to trafficking, unsafe migration, exploitative labor, and sexual exploitation, and consequently, through these additional violations, to HIV/AIDS.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the global region most affected by HIV/AIDS, the majority of new infections are contracted by young women through heterosexual intercourse. PHR conducted two population-based studies demonstrating the connections between denial of human rights and women's vulnerability to HIV/AIDS in Botswana and Swaziland, the two countries with the highest prevalence in the world. The studies provide evidence that a lack of food and other resources, lack of control over sexual relationships, inequitable access to testing and treatment and the persistence of HIV-related stigmatizing beliefs and gender-discriminatory attitudes are all contributors to gender inequality in HIV/AIDS infections.
Related links:
Gender-based Violence in Armed Conflict
No Status: Migration, Trafficking, and Exploitation of Women in Thailand
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