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Show Us the Money: Is violence against women on the HIV&AIDS donor agenda?
Women Won't Wait
March 2007

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Executive summary
Two pandemics threaten the health, lives and rights of women throughout the world: one is HIV&AIDS and the other is gender-based violence against women and girls. Violence against women and girls is a major contributor to death and illness among women, as well as to social isolation, loss of economic productivity, and loss of personal freedom. Research confirms that violence, and particularly intimate partner violence, also is a leading factor in the increasing "feminization" of the global AIDS pandemic, resulting in disproportionately higher rates of HIV infection among women and girls. Simultaneously, evidence confirms HIV&AIDS as both a cause and a consequence of the gender-based violence, stigma and discrimination that women and girls face in their families and communities, in peace and in conflict settings, by state and non-state actors, and within and outside of intimate partnerships.

For more than two decades, international women’s movements have fought for both international recognition of, and concrete action to promote, the human rights of all women. At the core of this are the principles that every woman has the human right to be free from violence, coercion, stigma and discrimination, and that every individual has the right to achieve the highest attainable standard of health, including sexual and reproductive health.

In response to the growing body of evidence on violence and HIV&AIDS, and in response to calls by human rights advocates for effective action on these issues, international institutions and national governments have articulated a concern to address gender-based violence, including within the context of HIV&AIDS. Little is known, however, about what is actually being done to address these issues in policies, programming and funding, and whether the efforts that are underway are truly based on the human rights and health agenda advocated for so long by women’s movements throughout the world. In order to better understand the level of resources – in policy, programming and funding -- committed to this deadly intersection, a report was commissioned by an international coalition of organizations working on women’s human rights, development, health and HIV& AIDS.

This report, "Show Us the Money: is violence against women on the HIV&AIDS donor agenda?" analyses the policies, programming and funding patterns of the four largest public donors to HIV&AIDS: the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR/US), the UK Department for International Development (DFID), and the World Bank, and UNAIDS (the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS). The report is the first step in an effort by this coalition to monitor the policies, programmes, and funding streams of international agencies and national governments, and to hold these agencies accountable to basic health and human rights objectives.

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