Domestic Violence and HIV-infection in Uganda

The human disaster of HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome), which has devastated the populations of countries worldwide, is having an increasingly disproportionate effect on women and girls. Women now constitute the majority of infected adults in sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East. In addition to an increased physiological susceptibility to HIV infection, violations of women’s rights heighten their vulnerability to AIDS. Women’s subordinate position in marriage; unequal access to economic opportunity, medical resources, information, and education; and, discriminatory property and legal rights, are just some of the factors that sustain the escalation of the pandemic, and make women particularly vulnerable to HIV infection.

Unremedied domestic violence, which is itself a widespread and chronic abuse of women all over the world, plays a critical role in exposing women to HIV infection. Violence, or the fear of violence, prevents women from freely accessing HIV/AIDS information, from negotiating condom use, and from resisting unprotected sex with an HIV-positive partner. Women may also face violence as a result of their own HIV-positive status. Traditional practices such as widow inheritance (the “inheritance” by a man of his brother’s widow) expose women to unprotected sex with male in-laws, while the payment of bride price (payment made by a man to the family of a woman he wishes to marry), establishes women as the physical property of their spouses, and underscores men’s authority to dictate the terms of sex. Women’s economic dependence compounds their vulnerability to violence and HIV-infection and leaves them unable to escape from potentially deadly marriages.

Domestic violence is the result of historically persistent restraints on women’s equality and sexual autonomy that have been inadequately addressed by governments worldwide. Women all over the world are confronted with social environments that sustain unequal power relations. They are forced to contend with persistent societal pressure to tolerate violence and are routinely subjected to coercion and emotional abuse from husbands and extended family. The reluctance of state officials to intervene in domestic matters and to undermine male authority in the home ensures that battered women are left unaided and condemned to endless abuse. While some countries have enacted specific domestic violence legislation, weak enforcement procedures may render such laws ineffective, while other countries lack an approach to the subject altogether.

In order to protect women from violence in the home and to decrease women’s vulnerability to infection, the enactment of comprehensive domestic violence laws that punish offenders and compensate victims is critical. Governments must repeal and amend discriminatory laws that violate international standards on women’s rights in marriage and women’s equal rights to property, and eradicate harmful traditional practices that subjugate women in marriage and subordinate them sexually to their husbands. Governments must also incorporate a focus on violence in the home as part of their HIV/AIDS national programming. Donor agencies, regional and international organizations can also play an important part by encouraging governments to include the specific needs of women at risk of HIV infection in broader HIV/AIDS programming, and by supporting governmental and NGO programs that directly address domestic violence and HIV/AIDS.

For more information on the link between domestic violence and HIV/AIDS in a case study on Uganda, see the Human Rights Watch report “Just Die Quietly: Domestic Violence & Women’s Vulnerability to HIV-infection in Uganda,” available at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/uganda0803.

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