GENEVA, Switzerland, March 10th, 2025 -/African Media Agency(AMA)/- Ahead of International Women’s Day, 8 March, UNAIDS calls for renewed efforts in support of gender equality to facilitate increased and accelerated access to HIV services for women and girls.
Great progress has been made in preventing new HIV infections among women and girls in the past two decades. The rate of new HIV infections declined by 63% among adolescent girls and young women between 2010 to 2023. However, women and girls remain most vulnerable to HIV. In sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls and young women aged between 15-24 years are three times more likely to be newly infected with HIV than men and boys the same age. Every week 4000 young women and girls become infected with HIV globally; 3100 of them are in sub-Saharan Africa.
UNAIDS urges continued funding to support women and girls to prevent new HIV infections, to stop gender-based violence – which heightens women’s and girls’ risk for HIV infection – and to ensure access to treatment, if prevention fails.
“There is a deep injustice faced by women and girls – their vulnerability to HIV,” said Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS. “But when we work with countries to support girls and enable them to complete secondary school, we keep them safer from HIV, from teenage pregnancy, from violence and child marriage. That means HIV programmes for women and girls need to be fully funded and expanded and that women and girls must be able to access the prevention and treatment tools that meet their specific needs. This includes new prevention tools – such as the new long-acting injectable HIV prevention technologies. HIV is a feminist issue, and we cannot wait any longer for gender equality.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Adopted in 1995 in China’s capital city by 189 governments, the declaration remains a fundamental blueprint for women and girls’ rights worldwide. Rooted in the experiences and demands of women and girls, the Beijing Declaration outlined 12 critical areas for action and affirmed women’s right to live free from violence. ‘Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights,’ was the rallying cry for feminists at that conference. It still is.
The world cannot wait for another 30 years to fulfill the promise of gender equality. It is key to continue advancing women’s and girls’ rights, promote gender equality, foster empowerment; and ensure that young women and girls can access the life-saving HIV services they need – and deserve.
UNAIDS
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizations—UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank—and works closely with global and national partners towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more at unaids.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
Distributed by African Media Agency (AMA) on behalf of UNAIDS.
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