I had the great honor of att
ending the World AIDS Day prayer breakfast hosted by World Vision earlier this month in New York. I blogged about my weekend in New York and, as was my assignment, reflected on my spiritual life for Fullfill, a new online magazine.
One of the highlights of the breakfast was hearing Kerry Kennedy give the keynote address. Although the statistics she gave about HIV/AIDS globally did not surprise me, as horrifying as they are, I have to admit I was shocked to learn about the prevalence of the sexual abuse of women in the U.S.
And I loved her call to action — “Our work is here; let’s do it,” she said.
Later that day, walking down a chilly sidewalk, I did as she suggested and composed a list of my “Jane”s — friends who had been sexually assaulted as girls or women. Jane. Jane. Jane. Jane. Jane. Jane. Jane. Without even scouring my mind, seven faces popped into my head. More would emerge as I gave it more thought.
The next day, sitting in a restaurant with a dear friend, drinking cappuccino and eating a spinach omelet, I told him about Kennedy’s remarks and the “Jane”s. He said, almost incredulously, “But do you really know that many women who were victims of sexual violence?” And I began to name my Janes. My friend sat, shaking his head.
Women so rarely tell, for so many reasons.
May the statistics and stories Kennedy tells be a call to action to vote, to make noise, to support organizations which seek to empower and protect people in the most vulnerable situations. And may we raise our sons and daughters to respect the dignity of every person, as the liturgy challenges me to do every week.
Below, please find her comments:
World Vision 2009 December
World AIDS Day Prayer Breakfast
Remarks by Kerry Kennedy
Speaking truth to power is the key to addressing the world wide AIDS pandemic, especially when it comes to women and children. 20 million people have died from AIDS world wide. Half of those now infected are women and children, and that percentage is on the rise. As Amnesty International points out, “women and girl’s lack of power over their bodies and their sexual lives, supported and reinforced by their social and economic inequality, make them particularly vulnerable to contracting HIV/AIDS.
Women are fighting both a virus and systemic discrimination in trying to overcome the threat of HIV/AIDS. Across the world, they face a number of circumstances which increase their risk of HIV infection in gender-specific ways. Many women are exposed to sexual violence and coerced sex inside and outside marriage, including through harmful traditional practices such as genital mutilation, early marriage, and wife inheritance. They frequently lack information on and access to HIV prevention measures and to health care as well as to support and medication after infection. They are denied property and inheritance rights, employment and access to finance – denials which make them dependent on men – and are frequently excluded from participation in policy-making and implementation, including on issues which primarily affect them.
However women are increasingly campaigning effectively for their rights. Grassroots activism by women, including in particular women living with HIV/AIDS, has grown for years with some striking successes – and in the face of a multitude of impediments.
The HIV pandemic is increasingly viewed as a strongly gendered health, development and human rights issue. It is a preventable disease yet some 40 million people live with the virus and the proportion of women affected is increasing. A comprehensive rights based approach is needed to effectively tackle the pandemic, its causes and consequences because of the gender-specific factors which put women at risk of contracting HIV/AIDS and of the consequences of contracting HIV/AIDS which women face:
- Violence against women and other forms of gender-based discrimination increase women’s likelihood of contracting HIV;
- Gender-based discrimination also hinders women’s access to prevention methods and to treatment;
- Agendas for an effective response to HIV/AIDS agreed by the international community – including UNAIDS human rights guidelines, the Cairo Programme of Action, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the Millennium Development Goals and others – have yet to be implemented effectively;
- International cooperation is needed to tackle the global inequities surrounding HIV prevalence and lack of access to treatment.”
I think there is no time in the last 30 years that our work in human rights and the fight against HIV/AIDS has been more closely aligned.
Last year, we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. After World War II, in reaction to the Nazi atrocities, the nations agreed that there are certain rights which are held by every human being on earth, and that these rights are so sacrosanct, that no government could violate them, or take them away.
The Declaration, and the human rights covenants that followed, are divided into political rights, like the rights to free expression, freedom of religion, the right to vote, and economic, social and cultural rights—these were thought of as aspiration—the right to food, the right to an education, the right to health care.
During the cold war, the West held up the political rights, and the communists proclaimed the importance of the economic rights. We won the cold war, and today you can sue a government if it violates political rights. But it is far more difficult to hold a government accountable for its failure to provide economic, social and cultural rights, like the right to health care. And that’s where the fight for human rights and the fight against HIV/AIDS are joined.
The cutting edge work in the field of human rights today is the work of making rights like the right to health care, justiciable. If we can make denial of healthcare capable of being settled by a court of law, we will have gone a long way in solving the pandemic, because governments will understand that they must provide these services or face the consequences.
The fact that women in general, and women living in poverty in particular, are vulnerable to human rights violations, further exacerbates the AIDS pandemic. Women in poverty have little access to health care. They are not tested, and if they are tested, they do not have the access to or the resources for financing anti retroviral drugs. Even if they do miraculously get the test, and the drugs, they are vulnerable because they probably have no access to clean water- which makes the healing process far more challenging.
Then, there is a higher impact of HIV/AIDS on the wage earners in house holds- this has an adverse impact on the entire family. Furthermore, the family’s recourses are likely to be diverted from education to treatment—creating another cycle of poverty and hopelessness.
In the United States, one in five women is sexually assaulted by the time she reaches 21. Globally, one in three women is sexually assaulted during her life time. Because of acceptance of violence against women, women are far more likely to become victims of HIV/AIDS through sexual assault. And then, to be ostracized by their communities first for the assault, and then for the HIV/AIDS which follows. And of course, women make up the burgeoning sex trade, near guarantor of premature death through HIV/AIDS. All of these are violations of women’s rights. And so, if you want to address HIV/AIDS, you must empower women.
Violence against women is the greatest challenge faced by the international community today. Violence against women is the inevitable extension of acceptance, world wide, of discrimination which denies equality and allows women’s’ bodies to be appropriated for sexual gratification and political power.
Violence by family, Violence by employers, violence by strangers, violence by government officials while in the military or in prison, violence suffered by civilians during war. And the failure of governments to stop the violence makes discrimination all the more pervasive.
Under international law, and in many countries, domestic law, the state has a duty to protect women from violence committed not only by agents of the state but also by private individuals and groups. States must exercise due diligence to secure women’s rights to equality, life, liberty, security, and freedom from discrimination, torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. States must have policies and plans to protect people from abuse of these rights, and to provide redress and reparations when those rights have been violated. (AI June 2004 TURKEY)
Still, across the globe, women who are badgered, beaten, brutalized, mutilated and raped can expect police, judges and prosecutors to humiliate victims, fail to investigate cases and dismiss charges.
WHO reports that up to 70% of female murder victims are killed by their male partners. Worldwide, at least one of every three women – over one billion women- will be beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime.
In the USA there are:
- 4 million domestic violence cases per year
- Every 15 seconds a woman is battered (AI USA)
- Every day 4 women die as a result of murder by husbands or boyfriends, but there are still MORE animal shelters – 4 times as many (US Surgeon general)
Sexual assault is nothing less then epidemic. In the US, 700,000 women are raped each year, and 1 in 5 women are subjected to sexual assault by the time they are 21. That is 1 in 5.
Think it’s hard to believe? Count up the number of women you know personally who have been sexually assaulted. I did. I know 15 women who were raped in the United States. Let me tell you about them. I’ll call them all Jane:
- Poor and black by her drunken father
- Wealthy and white by her drunken father
- Jane by her grandfather over and over
- Ivy league dorm, asleep after a party
- Au pair, at a friend’s house, asleep after a party
- Jane and Jane in
- Stalked
- Under anesthesia
- Father’s best friend
- Boss
- Superior officer
- Stranger, stranger, stranger.
All told me, “I can’t go to the police.”
All of these women told me. Only one told the police.
Her case was dismissed.
Go ahead and count the women you know who have been raped. If you can’t count them, then, statistics show, it’s not because it didn’t happen, it’s just that they were too ashamed or too frightened to tell.
Now imagine what it means to be a victim of rape in Pakistan, where women who are raped are considered to have compromised their family’s honor. Fathers, brothers and sons see it as their duty to avenge the offense, not by pursuing the perpetrator, but by murdering the victim: their own daughters, sisters, mothers.
More than eight hundred women were murdered in one year in Pakistan in the name of honor. In Jordan, almost every female murder is an honor crime; the sentence for murdering a sister raped by a relative is as little as six months.
Sexual violence – warfare. Girls and Women from Liberia, Kosovo, and Sierra Leone have reported massive rape and sexual mutilation as a military strategy for ethnic cleansing. As a result, tens of thousands have contracted HIV/AIDS, been forced into sexual slavery, and have been displaced from their homes.
Women are subjected to rape by family, strangers, and the enemy in times of war. They are also victims to assault by their own governments, while serving in the military, while in prison, and even when attempting to obtain health care.
Across the country, barriers are placed on preventive health care services for women, and in many states, women must pay for contraceptives while Viagra is covered by insurance for men.
Discrimination against women is pervasive in our country. Today women earn 79 cents on every dollar made by men. The numbers get significantly worse when you compare men to mothers.
We are blessed to be living in a country born of revolution where institutions are capable of change because of citizen activism. We must participate in the political process if we truly seek change. And we abdicate our right to vote at our peril.
This year, more than 15,000 women will be sold into sexual slavery in China. 200 women in Bangladesh will be horribly disfigured when their spurned husbands or suitors burn them with acid. More than 7,000 women in India will be murdered by their families and in-laws in disputes over dowries. (AI USA)
In Russia women are denied the right to work in 400 professions.
In Saudi Arabia women can neither vote nor drive automobiles.
In Bolivia, sexual harassment is not illegal.
Women constitute half the world’s population, perform nearly two thirds of its work hours, receive one tenth of the world’s income and own less than one tenth of the world’s property.
What a waste. Imagine what would happen if we actually took advantage of the talent of women everywhere—talent we are now squandering. Who among them would cure disease, stop war, feed the hungry, love a child?
Reflecting on the magnitude of violence based on sex, it is easy to give in to futility—and it is tempting to retreat into our own contained demanding worlds, but I’d like to share with you encounters with a few of the defenders from Speak Truth To Power which clarified my thinking and inspired my work.
I spent time with Elie Weisel and Desmond Tutu and Marian Wright Edelman and Digna Ochoa. They all say that we have to be angry enough to speak out…
Women like Digna who survive torture or abuse and go on to take up the cause of human rights, and have never given in to the forces of futility nor the temptation to violence, inspire us to embrace our beliefs and hold fast to our dreams.
I grew up in the Judeo Christian tradition where we painted our prophets on ceilings and sealed our saints in stained glass. They were superhuman, untouchable, and so we were freed from the burden of their challenge.
But here on earth, people like these are living, breathing human beings in our midst. Their determination, valor and commitment in the face of overwhelming danger, challenge each of us to take up the torch for a more decent society. Today we are blessed by the presence of certain people who are gifts from God. They are teachers, who show us not how to be saints, but how to be fully human.
I would like to end with these lines from a poem by
The most famous woman poet, anonymous:
Today is ours; Let’s take it!
And love is strong; Let’s give it!
A song can help; Let’s sing it!
And peace is dear; Let’s bring it!
The past is gone; Don’t rue it!
Our work is here; Let’s do it!
The world is wrong; Let’s right it!
The battle is hard; Let’s fight it!
The road is rough; Let’s clear it!
The future vast; Don’t fear it!
Is faith asleep; Let’s wake it!
Today is ours; Let’s take it!!