Zambia
Sexual abuse in Zambia fuels girls' AIDS epidemic

afrol News, 28 January - The high rate of sexual abuse and violence experienced by Zambian girls and women also has a lethal price. The abuse also fuels the HIV/AIDS epidemic and produces a strikingly higher HIV prevalence among girls than boys, a new report shows. HIV prevalence is five times higher among young girls than young boys.

- Concerted national and international efforts to protect the rights of girls and young women are key to curbing the AIDS epidemic's destructive course, the US group Human Rights Watch concluded in its new 121-page report, 'Suffering in Silence: Human Rights Abuses and HIV Transmission to Girls in Zambia,' released today. 

The thorough report details sexual abuse and other human rights abuses of Zambian girls, especially girls themselves orphaned by AIDS. The report also documents many incidents of abuse of orphan girls at the hands of their guardians. Some of the abused girls were as young as 11 years old. 

- After my mother died, I went to my mother's mother, 16-year-old Patricia M. had told the researchers. "In 2001, she died, so I stopped school. ... Then we went to my auntie, my mom's younger sister. ... Most girls find that they start keeping up with [having sex with] stepfathers or uncles. Most are raped. They have no say. They think if you bring them to the police, there will be no one to keep me. So they keep quiet," she said on her situtation.

- It is no accident that HIV prevalence is five times higher among girls than boys under age 18 in Zambia, said Janet Fleischman, of the human rights group, who is also author of the report. "Young girls are preyed upon by older men—including those who dare call themselves guardians or caretakers of these girls, and the government fails to protect them." 

In addition, sexual violence and coercion of girls are fuelled by men's targeting for sex younger and younger girls who are assumed to be HIV-negative or seeking them out based on the myth that sex with virgins will cure AIDS: the phenomenon of "sugar daddies," unscrupulous older men who entice girls into sex with offers of gifts or money, has been a particular focus of media in Zambia and elsewhere in Africa. "The subordinate social and legal status of women and girls makes it difficult for them to negotiate safer sex and to take steps to protect themselves," the study notes.

The UN's annual assessment of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, released in December, emphasized that in Africa "the face of AIDS is clearly a female face," and noted the much higher rate of HIV transmission among girls than boys all over the continent. The new Human Rights Watch report tells the human story behind this disparity, detailing many ways in which girls in Zambia are vulnerable to the disease through abuse and subordination. 

- Girls orphaned by AIDS face stigma and poverty and too often are unable to stay in school, Ms Fleischman said. "They may have no recourse but to trade sex for survival—their own survival and sometimes that of their siblings - and they are rarely able to negotiate safer sex." 

Zambia is not the only country facing this challenge, Fleischman noted. Sexual abuse of young girls is especially common all over Southern Africa - but with more than one in five adults infected and very high HIV prevalence among girls and young women, "it illustrates a situation that should be central to the United States' and other donors' development assistance agenda and HIV/AIDS programs," the US group noted.

The report concludes laws against sexual violence and abuse are inadequately enforced in Zambia. "The insensitive and ineffectual handling of sexual violence complaints by the law enforcement system often deters victims from reporting cases and impedes prosecution of perpetrators," the group noted. 

Zambia is slated to receive US$ 93 million for AIDS programs from the Global Fund on HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis and US$ 42 million from the World Bank in the next few years. Other donors, including the US, have also given millions for anti-AIDS efforts. Little of this assistance, however, is targeted to protecting girls from sexual abuse, the researchers had found. 

Human Rights Watch today urged the government of Zambia to intensify training on addressing sexual abuse for police and court officials, to strengthen victim support units of the police, and to ensure rigorous prosecution of perpetrators of these crimes. 

- The improvements needed to enforce existing laws against sexual abuse are not very costly compared to many other elements of AIDS programs, said Ms Fleischman. "The government and donors have a chance to make a dent in the hyper-epidemic of HIV transmission among girls by making their protection a priority." 

Recent studies have indicated a reduction in HIV prevalence among young adults in Zambia, reportedly due to sexual behaviour change, including increased condom use. "However, progress in reducing new cases will be stalled if the abuses that put girls at risk of infection are not addressed," Ms Fleischman concludes.

Sources: Based on Human Rights Watch and afrol archives

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