First Asia Pacific Court of Women on HIV and inheritance and property rights to be held in Colombo.
Colombo, August 16: Compelling life stories by HIV positive women from Asia and the Pacific on the denial of inheritance and property rights and their dispossessions by families and society because of their HIV status, insightful analyses by activists and academics on the broader context within which this dispossession is taking place and visionary responses from an Eminent Jury will be the highlights of the “Regional Court of Women” to be held in Colombo, Sri Lanka as part of the 8th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP).
Organised by UNDP Regional HIV and Development Programme and Asian Women’s Human Rights Council (AWHRC) in partnership with UNIFEM, UNAIDS and several NGOs in the region, this “Asia Pacific Court of Women on HIV, Inheritance and Property Rights: from Disposession to Livelihoods” will be the first regional summit on the issue of inheritance and property rights of women in the context of HIV. It is an attempt to give visibility to the lives and voices of those who are increasingly being pushed to the margins of our societies and polity because they are identified as positive and because they are poor.
Speaking to reporters here today, Ms. Caitlin Wiesen, Regional HIV/AIDS Team Leader, UNDP Regional Centre in Colombo, said, the “Court” will bring to public focus the challenges faced by women in the context of HIV and AIDS. “HIV deepens the prevalent gender inequalities driving the epidemic in the region. When women are denied their rights to inheritance and property, they are robbed of the social and economic empowerment needed to help prevent HIV infection and cope with its impact on families and communities,” she said. “The unequal rights of women to inheritance and property in many parts of the region have been severely aggravated by HIV. Burdened by the care of their spouses, illnesses and the responsibility of the household, women living with or affected by HIV are often denied their rightful access to property when their spouses die. Blamed, abused and expelled from marital homes, HIV positive women are often denied access to their children as well.”
The feminization of the epidemic in the Asia Pacific region and the related challenges are truly daunting, Ms. Wiesen said. About 30 per cent of the new infections in the region are among women. With little or no control over their sexual lives and burdened by abuse, exploitation and violence, women in the region are extremely vulnerable to HIV as borne out by the facts. In PNG, 60 per cent of the new infections are among women while in Thailand, “housewives” accounted for 40 per cent of the new cases.
Inheritance and property rights are tools for empowerment and protection of women in the context of HIV. Studies show that ownership of properties offer some form of protection against violence and HIV vulnerability. However, what we see in the region is that a large number of women are denied inheritance and property rights when they need them the most. A recent socio-economic impact study in India by UNDP and the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) show that 79 per cent of the AIDS-widows in the country were denied a share of their husband’s property and 90 percent were expelled from their marital home. “Dispossessed of land and property, women are left to inherit HIV, loss of family, shame and poverty,” Ms. Wiesen added. “Women should be empowered to claim their rights to inherit properties and to disinherit their vulnerabilities to HIV”
“The expulsion of HIV widows from marital homes, and the indignities, humiliation and discrimination they face, the deepened deprivation and vulnerability to HIV they endure is well known in other parts of the world such as Eastern and Southern Africa. However, in Asia and the Pacific, the story is yet to be told on a scale that the Regional Court will provide on Saturday.”
Twenty women living with HIV, representing Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, PNG and South Africa will narrate their harrowing tales as testimonials before the “Court”, Ms Wiesen said. With facts and figures we often become numbed to the realities that women live in the context of a burgeoning epidemic. These personal testimonials will bear witness to the socially sanctioned violence women experience at individual and societal levels. It also provides the space to hear and celebrate women who have persisted against all odds and succeeded in reclaiming their rights to housing, safe shelter, livelihoods and their families.
Speaking about the processes and perspectives that inform the Courts of Women, Madhu Bhushan, AWHRC, India, said that the Courts are part of a global movement that seeks to redefine rights and other notions of justice from the lives and life visions of women – particularly from the global South.
Conceived and initiated by Corinne Kumar, the founder of AWHRC and the Secretary General of El Taller International in 1992, more than 30 Courts of Women have been held in different regions of the world – Asia, Arab states, Africa, Central and Latin America. The issues have been diverse and also specific to the regions they have been held in – from the violence of poverty, globalisation and development, the violence of cultures, caste and racism to the violence of nuclearisation and of all wars.
Through exploring the feminist methodology of weaving together the personal with the political, women’s subjective testimonies are woven together with objective realities presented by Expert Witnesses. The Courts also offer us other ways to know through weaving together the logical with the lyrical by interspersing these testimonies and analyses with video testimonies, artistic images and poetry. By urging us to listen to the women as the victims and witnesses to the violence of our times, the Courts seek to create reference points of justice other than that of the rule of law; they seek to return ethics back to politics.
It is in this context that this Court of Women on HIV, Inheritance and Property Rights, seeks to define property and inheritance from the perspective of the dispossessed disinherited women towards finding responses that must not only be legal but also rooted in social transformation.
About 30 testifiers and expert witnesses from different countries in the region including Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Cambodia, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Malaysia and even Ethiopia and South Africa will present testimonies in four sessions i.e.
1.Poverty, Violence and HIV2.Culture, Marginalisation and HIV3.Evaluating State Responses and 4.Voices of Resistance and Hope
The Eminent Jury will include Miloon Kothari, UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing; Marina Mahathir (Malaysia), Justice Shiranee Tilakawardane (Sri Lanka), Justice Kalyan Shrestha (Nepal), Cherie Honkala (United States), Lawrence Liang (India) and Farida Akhter (Bangladesh). In addition, five experts of repute will present their contextual analyses of the diverse aspects of the issue. These “expert witnesses” will be Vicky Corpuz, Tebtebba Foundation, Philippines; Sunila Abeyesekera, INFORM, Sri Lanka; Anand Grover, Lawyers Collective, India; Elizabeth Reid, Sociologist, Australia; and Assefa Yirga Gebregziabher, Ethiopian lawyer.
The issue of HIV and women’s rights to property and inheritance is a major theme of the ICAAP. Starting with first ever Regional Court of Women on the issue, the theme will feature in plenary sessions, symposia, and in the Community Dialogue Space of the Asia Pacific Village.
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