InterPress News Service (IPS) - July 3, 1998
Judith Achieng'

More than 25 percent of the women living in Sub-Saharan Africa are exposed to HIV infection, despite the fact that 80 percent know of the virus and are willing to practice safe sex, according to a European Commission(EC)-funded study.

Lieve Francine, director of the EC's HIV/AIDS programme told journalists at the ongoing AIDS Conference here that most African women contract HIV, because of restricted choices and gender disparities, which among other things, subject them to sexual violence. "If a man does not want to use a condom, it is a difficult situation for a woman," she said.

In Tanzania, one of the countries surveyed in the study, 40 percent of the women interviewed had had a violent first sexual experience, mainly through forced marriages.

Claire Mulanga of the Society for Women and AIDS in Africa, said that:

"Economic dependency and cultural surbodination put women in a vulnerable position. Without economic power, women don't have peace, and cannot make decisions to take control of their lives."

Besides poverty, traditional customs, like polygamy and negative male attitudes towards condoms, expose many women to the risk of HIV, added Judy Mwaura of Women Fighting AIDS in Kenya.

The World Health Organisation estimates that 11.7 million people have died of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Of the 2.3 million who died in 1997, 46 percent were women.

African women also are at greater risk from HIV/AIDS due to the sexual violence inflicted on them during war. "During a civil war, the environment is conducive to violence against women and relative high risk behaviour," said delegate Idrissa Sow, who is based in Switzerland.

Women, who have loss their spouses or male guardians, are often sexually assaulted by soldiers and male refugees, said Millicent Obaso, the health coordinator for the International Red Cross for the Great Lakes and East Africa regions.

"...Women and girls are vulnerable to sexual abuse at every stage of their flight(during conflicts) and find themselves coerced into sex for basic needs such as food and shelter," she added.

In northern Uganda for example, a rebel army opposed to President Yoweri Museveni's government has abducted more than 8000 children between the ages of 10 and 16 since 1986, recruiting the boys as fighters and the girls as sex slaves.

Sexual violence also has been used as a weapon in Somalia and Liberia, and more than 15,000 rape cases were reported during Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

Even in the refugee camps where women and girls seek shelter, the incidence of rape is high. In Kigoma refugee camp in Tanzania where Congolese and Burundian refugees are housed, more than 250 rapes have been reported within the last seven months, according to Obaso.

Obaso added that very little work has been done on preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS in conflict situations. "Prevention has not been seen as a priority in emergencies...it is only after the 1994 crisis in Rwanda, where a study showed infection rates nearly 10 times as high as they were in the 1980s, that there was a signal for the need to change attitudes," she said. (end/ips/ja/pm/98)

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