Sexual Violence and HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Intimate Link

Abstract

Sexual violence is an epidemic that often overlaps with the AIDS pandemic and is often a cause and consequence of the spread of HIV/AIDS amongst women and girls. Presently, half or more of the 40 million people infected with HIV in the world are women. Millions of those infected are aged 15–24 years and have suffered some form of intimate partner violence. This group accounts for half of all new infections. In sub-Saharan Africa, young women account for 75% of HIV infections and are approximately two-and-a-half times more likely to be infected than young men of the same age (UNAIDS, Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic: 4th Global Report, Geneva, 2004). What makes women, especially girls and younger women, so disproportionately vulnerable to HIV infection, and why have current AIDS control efforts in sub-Saharan Africa largely failed to stem the epidemic in this gender?

Notes

1. Unless otherwise specified, the odds ratios reported are adjusted for other factors. See Aniekwu's presentation at the Centre for Human Rights International academic conference, ‘Crossing the boundaries: the place of human rights in Contemporary Scholarship’ London School of Economics and Political Science, March 2006.

2. ‘Transactional sex’ is defined as exchange of sex with men for material gains and basic survival needs. Women who exchange sex for money may not necessarily identify themselves as sex workers.

3. For many adolescent girls, older men provide gifts or offer life chances in terms of education by paying for school fees as part of the sexual exchange. For older men, preference for adolescent girls is partly driven by the belief that the girls are likely to be free from AIDS.