PHR Student Blog

The PHR chapter at Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy (NEOUCOM) had a banner World AIDS Day celebration. Writes NEOUCOMS’s Julia Ng:

Students from NEOUCOM’s PHR chapter held an AIDS Week of Awareness surrounding World AIDS Day. Daily speakers and activities covered a wide range of topics from harm reduction and access to anti-retroviral medications to the feminization of AIDS. As a visual representation of this week, the student body received red ribbons and many students participated in creating Peace Tiles. These tiles were a depiction of students’ emotions regarding HIV/AIDS and what should be done to help fight this epidemic. As a first year chapter at NEOUCOM, the members were extremely excited by the interest from the student body and faculty and look forward to implementing what they’ve learned at local Syringe Exchange Programs and HIV/AIDS support agencies.

Check out these photos from NEOCOM’s WAD events.

Got great photos from your chapter’s WAD events? Email me at skalloch[at]phrusa[dot]org and we’ll post them here!

Promote Women’s Rights. Protect Women’s Health.

In commemoration of World AIDS Day (Dec 1) and Human Rights Day (Dec 10), mobilize your school to join the 10,000 Signatures in 10 Days campaign for US ratification of the Convention To Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

In addition to our 2009 World AIDS Toolkit, we are excited to share these new practical tools for you and your chapter to easily participate in the World AIDS Day/Human Rights Day campaign:

Organizing the National Sign-on Drive on Your Campus

• Sample sign-on e-invitation to go out to student body email lists and relevant student groups
• Sample sign-on e-invitation for your faculty and Deans
• WAD tabling flyer to host a sign-on table in a public area on your campus
• Hard-copy version of the national sign-on, in the event that you cannot use computers at tables or events to collect signatures. (Please scan and send the hardcopy petitions to Dan at dshalev[at]phrusa[dot]org to have the signatures included in the National Sign-On.)
• Guide for Tabling

Participating in an In-District Meeting with Your Senator

• Meeting talking points
• Guide to meeting with elected officials
• Fact sheet on CEDAW, Women, and HIV/AIDS

If you are interested in having an in-district meeting with your senator, we are happy to help schedule the meeting for you. Contact Dan at dshalev[at]phrusa[dot]org for more information about how to get involved.

Note: The national sign-on webpage, HumanRightsForWomen.org, will launch on World AIDS Day (Dec 1.)

If you have any questions as you prepare for World AIDS Day, please contact me.

World AIDS Day (WAD) is a uniquely dynamic time of year where people from throughout your community are willing to come together and discuss the global AIDS crisis. We highly encourage your student chapters to take advantage and invite your colleagues to join you in recognizing World AIDS Day! Here are some resource recommendations to help as you consider event options, including, film recommendations, journal club articles, and tips for finding speakers.

Film Recommendations

A film screening can be an easy and effective way to get people involved and fill them in on the most pressing issues. Numerous powerful films have been made about the global AIDS crisis and themes such as human rights, women’s rights, and universal access. Here are a few suggestions of relatively recent and well received films:

• Coming to Say Goodbye: Stories of AIDS in Africa – This short (27 minute) feature weaves together the stories of several families dealing with AIDS in Tanzania and Kenya.
• Yesterday – Oscar nominated film about an HIV-positive mother in South Africa struggling to stay alive long enough to see her daughter off to school.
• A Closer Walk - Narrated by Will Smith and Glenn Close and featuring Kofi Annan, the Dalai Lama and Bono this expansive film about the global AIDS crisis travels between Africa, North America, Europe and South Asia as it explores the challenges and heartbreaks of AIDS.
• A Powerful Noise – A documentary about three women in different parts of the world (one of whom is an HIV-positive advocate for PWAs in Vietnam) overcoming gender barriers and poverty to affect positive changes in their respective communities.
• SASA – A 33 minute award-winning film that provides a glimpse into the lives of two East African women where intimate partner violence has made them susceptible to HIV. (The film is saved as a .mov file and thus needs to be played using QuickTime or a compatible player.)

Organize a Journal Club

A smaller event idea for interested members of your organization can be a discussion group to discuss relevant articles and brainstorm ideas. Consider using WAD as the inspiration for a journal club on health and human rights, global AIDS, or other related issues! Here are three good articles to use as a springboard to further discussion and reading:

1. Confronting AIDS: Human Rights, Law and Social Transformation; Mark Heywood and Dennis Altman; Health and Human Rights, Volume 5, No. 1 (2000), Pages 149-179
2. All for Universal Health Coverage; Laurie Garrett, A Mushtaque R Chowdhury and Ariel Pablos-Mendez; The Lancet, Volume 374, No. 9697, Pages 1294-1299
3. Human Rights Approaches to an Expanded Response to Address Women’s Vulnerability to HIV/AIDS; Daniel Whelan; Health and Human Rights, Volume 3, No. 1 (1998), Pages 20-36.

Additional Health and Human Rights-related articles and Right to Health-related books and journals are available on our website.

Host a Presenter

Having a guest come speak is always a fantastic idea for an event. Check out our Host a Speaker Guide and read some tips for finding and inviting a speaker:

• Ask your professors! Faculty members tend to know many people in the field and often have insight into who in the area might be most likely to be able to attend your event. They can also lend their support by helping present the invitation and acting asde facto sponsors of your event.
• Do some investigation to find non-university activists or organizations from the local community.
• Take advantage of the internet. You may be pleasantly surprised and realize they are at a nearby institution or in the same city.
• Reach out to other student groups to co-host an event. Not only does this make publicity more effective, it also means you can pool funds to invite someone from further away than would otherwise be possible.

Women all over the world are facing discrimination, abuse and systematic inequities that make then especially vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. Until we protect women from sexual violence and exploitation, provide health and prenatal care and education, and provide all women the socioeconomic power to negotiate safer sex practices, HIV/AIDS will continue to disproportionately affect women in many parts of the world.

This year, in keeping with the 2009 theme of Universal Access and Human Rights, we’re dedicating World AIDS Day and Human Rights Day to getting the United States to ratify the Convention to End All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

Join us for the 10,000 in 10 campaign, which aims to collect ten thousand signatures for US ratification of CEDAW during the ten days between World AIDS Day (Dec 1) and Human Rights Day (Dec 10)!

There are a variety of opportunities to join the national action, depending on your interest and capacity:

1. Mobilize the health professional student and faculty communities to urge the US to ratify CEDAW as a step forward in protecting women’s rights and health. PHR is doing this in partnership with a number of other organizations, allowing for a greater national movement. Our challenge to each PHR chapter: collect 100 signatures of support for CEDAW from your community.
2. Host educational events on campuses nationwide about women, HIV, and the human rights context/approach.
3. Organize an in-district meeting with your Senator to personally deliver the signatures you collect and urge him or her to support CEDAW.

As you plan your school’s involvement in World AIDS Day, download our 2009 World AIDS Day Toolkit to receive educational & organizing resources to reach out to students and faculty, organize successful events, and educate members of your community. And stay tuned to the Student Blog for more hands-on advocacy resources available mid-November.

Sudan, Qatar, Tonga, Palau, Nauru, Iran, Somalia…United States? The US has the dubious distinction of being one of only eight United Nations member states (out of 192) who have failed to ratify the Convention to End All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

CEDAW, which was adopted by the U.N. general assembly in 1979, is the premier document in international law dealing with women’s rights. CEDAW addresses a diverse array of women’s rights and human rights issues including equality in civil, social, political and economic life, protection from sexual violence, and reproductive freedom. As President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton work to move the United States to the forefront of international human rights and women’s rights work, it is imperative that we ratify CEDAW and demonstrate that we are serious about our obligations to the international community and to women worldwide.

This year, in recognition of both World AIDS Day (Dec 1) and Human Rights Day (Dec 10), PHR and other partnering organizations will mount a 10,000 signatures in 10 days campaign. Join us in letting your senator know that it’s time for the United States to ratify CEDAW and commit to women’s rights worldwide. We’ll be posting an educational and event planning toolkit next week, with many more World AIDS Day resources to follow, so stay tuned!

World AIDS Day is coming up, and this year’s theme is Human Rights and Universal Access. To stop AIDS, we must promote and protect human rights—especially those of women and girls. Therefore, to celebrate World AIDS Day 2009, PHR is launching a campaign to urge the US Senate to ratify CEDAW—and to officially recognize that protecting women promotes their health and the health of societies worldwide.

CEDAW, or the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, is an international convention adopted by the United Nations in 1979. It serves as an international bill of human rights for women, specifically extending provisions laid out by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to women while also addressing issues unique to women worldwide. Many of the provisions laid out in CEDAW, such as the right to health for women, the right to civil and domestic equality, and the right to reproductive freedom, directly pertain to controlling the spread of HIV/AIDS. Although women all over the world have used CEDAW to enact positive changes in their own countries, the United States remains one of only eight member countries of the U.N. that have not ratified CEDAW—the others include Iran, Sudan and Somalia. This World AIDS Day, we’re looking to change that.

To gear up for your school’s involvement in World AIDS Day, here are a few introductory factsheets on CEDAW and U.S. Ratification. Use these as articles for discussion groups, addendums to relevant course reading, informational handouts during tabling or events, etc. These serve as a great way to familiarize yourself, your chapter, and your peers with what CEDAW is and how the United States can join the international community in supporting women’s rights:

• The American Bar Association’s Information on and Summary of CEDAW
• Amnesty International’s CEDAW Factsheet and Common Myths
• Amnesty’s CEDAW and Maternal Health Factsheet
• The Working Group on Ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women’s Factsheet

For a more in depth read, check out these sites:

• Official CEDAW Site with the Full Text of CEDAW
• U.N. CEDAW Committee Webpage

If you’re wondering how exactly CEDAW and the global AIDS pandemic relate:

• UNIFEM’s free informational booklet on CEDAW and AIDS, Turning the Tide
• UNAIDS Global Coalition on Women and AIDS

Finally, check out some of PHR’s material on the feminization of the pandemic:

• Epidemic of Inequality: Women’s Rights and HIV/AIDS in Botswana & Swaziland
• Health Rights=Healthy Women Platform
• Halting the Feminization of AIDS: Lessons from Kenya

PHR will join the globe in celebrating World AIDS Day (WAD) on December 1, 2009. This year’s WAD theme is Universal Access and Human Rights. The critical message: access for all to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care is a fundamental human right we all must fight to protect.

Given this year’s theme, PHR and other partnering organizations will bridge World AIDS Day (Dec 1) with Human Rights Day (Dec 10) with a 10,000 signatures in 10 days campaign, mobilizing American’s to advocate for U.S. ratification of the Convention to Eliminate All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 2010.

What does CEDAW do for women’s right?
CEDAW creates a legal, universal definition of women’s rights and discrimination against women. It includes: direction for ratified countries to ensure national laws respect the universal standards, monitoring processes for women’s rights standards worldwide, and forums for handling grievances and holding governments accountable. Learn more about CEDAW.

If the US wants to play a credible and influential leadership role on health, human rights and women’s empowerment—As president Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have promised—it must ratify the most prominent international law for women.

Why push for CEDAW on World AIDS Day?
Women and young girls presently comprise more than 60% of those who are living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, and the numbers continue to grow. Any solution to the epidemic must acknowledge the devastating gender dynamics of AIDS and place women’s empowerment at the center of the solution. To halt the feminization of AIDS, we must address the root causes of HIV/AIDS transmission, many of which are based on human rights violations such as widespread gender-based violence, stigma and discrimination, and inequalities and violations of economic, social, legal, health and educational rights.

The most vexing and intolerable dimension of the pandemic is what is happening to women. Gender inequality is driving the pandemic, and we will never subdue the gruesome force of AIDS until the rights of women become paramount in the struggle.
-Stephen Lewis, Keynote Speech at International AIDS Conference, Toronto

Join us!
Mark your calendars for Dec 1-Dec 10 to:

• mobilize your campus to participate in this national action by urging your Senators to support U.S. ratification of CEDAW and helping PHR collect 10,000 signatures
• educate your community about the feminization of AIDS and its direct connection to women’s rights standards.

Throughout the next few weeks, we will launch a series of educational and organizing resources to help you plan your national WAD action. In the meantime, please feel free to contact me with any questions and requests for further information.