AEGiS-15IAC: The conspiracy of culture, traditional impurity and silence, a case of Zambia.

15th International AIDS Conference

Bangkok, Thailand - July 11-16, 2004

The conspiracy of culture, traditional impurity and silence, a case of Zambia.

Int Conf AIDS 2004 Jul 11-16; 15:(abstract no. TuOrD1167)

Zulu KP
Youth Forum Zambia, Lusaka, Zambia

ISSUES: In most African Countries, childhood is a time of hardships, particularly in Zambia where child abuse, sexual defilement, HIV/AIDS and other sexual transmitted infections (STIs), so often fall heavily on children. The conspiracy of culture and traditional impurity has greatly contributed to the rise of HIV/AIDS and other STIs from adults to children below the age of 13.

DESCRIPTION: A paramount chief defiled and infected an STI to a 13-year-old girl. Village headmen rose against the girl's family for making it public in the private media. The girl was shifted to the capital Lusaka for fear of violence. During the same week, a 9-year-old girl died of an STI in Lusaka, after being defiled and infected by her stepbrother. She couldn't tell anyone in the family for fear of loosing her cultural identity and discriminated against. In spite of all hardships and stigma, children have the right to education, affection and cultural identity, a right to be heard, protected from sexual abuse, neglect, maltreatment and exploitation.

LESSONS LEARNED: Defilement, Molestation and consequently infecting children with HIV and other STIs is constituting a moral and child health crisis in Zambia if not in Africa. Traditional conspiracy of silence is undoing achievements in children's rights, health and welfare in the past decade and increasingly among rural based children. Selective prosecution of culprits by the state endorse continued child defilement and molestation, which in turn put severe health and psychological trauma on children.

RECOMMENDATIONS: If fighting the conspiracy of cultural silence on sex and defilement is to be won, governments must suitably modify the existing laws that govern tradition and culture, so as to ensure effective protection of children from immoral and harmful traditional practices and values or norms that expose children to HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections.

Keywords: AEGIS, Culture, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, HIV Infections, Human Rights, Zambia, HIV Seropositivity, Health Planning Guidelines, Health, Family, Africa, Child Welfare, Child Abuse, Child, Humans, Adult, Female, ethnology, economics, education

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TuOrD1167