July 11, 2007

Never Say Never in Nairobi: Africa Hosts a Women's Summit on HIV

How is it that, 25 years into the AIDS epidemic, women living with HIV and activists working on women’s issues had never convened an international conference until last week? That question kept surfacing during the July 4-7 International Women’s Summit in Nairobi, Kenya—but the 1,500 or so participants preferred to focus on the future instead. “You know something special will be happening now with all of us women,” said Margaret Kapihya, who heads the Zambian branch of the World YWCA, wandering with a smile on her face through the Sokoni marketplace, the conference showcase for crafts and other products made through income-generating projects.

It was the World YWCA, partnering with the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (ICW), that finally organized this unprecedented women’s meeting—known officially as the “International Women’s Summit: Women’s Leadership Making a Diffference on HIV and AIDS”—along with support from UNIFEM and other international partners. Kapihya joined leaders from around the world, including hundreds of HIV-positive women, many of them Africans who are emerging as a grassroots force for advocacy on the continent.

Among them was Emerithe Nakabonye, a soft-spoken woman from outside Kigali, Rwanda, who took her first plane ride last week and stayed in her first hotel. She enjoyed both, she said, but they were nothing compared to the sight of so many HIV-positive women. “It is like a dream,” she said through a Kinyarwanda translator.

U.S. pioneers in the movement—such as the positive women of ICW and The Well Project—found the excitement infectious. For many, the Kenya summit was a passing of the torch, as a new generation of women and young girls step up to claim their place as leaders. Nowhere was that more evident than at a day-long, closed-door Positive Women’s Forum and a jam-packed public discussion about  “Positive Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights.” These events were as much celebration as discussion, with whooping African ululation and elaborate clapping giving them the feeling of holy-roller tent revivals.

At another event, ICW’s Dorothy Onyango of Kenya cut a striking figure at Nairobi’s City Hall in a pin-striped pantsuit, her short dreads bound in a purple turban. “I am blushing,” she confessed, introducing herself as “a woman living with HIV/AIDS for 17 years.” Onyango said African women were determined to lead the way in this movement. “I am hoping that in the coming year, Kenya will have the [ICW] Chair,” she said, throwing down a direct challenge.

Canada’s petite Louise Binder spoke next. Last August in Toronto, Binder took the world to task for ignoring the needs, rights and leadership of women, and worse, attempting to speak on behalf of African and positive women in developing countries. Now, in Kenya, she said, “I want you to know we can live well, we can live strong and we must—we must—continue to fight for the right to do that.”

Global AIDS prevention policies came repeatedly under the gun at the Nairobi conference, specifically the failures of abstinence-only policies; the impact of gender-based violence; and the need for money to continue researching microbicides. A spontaneous protest-cum-conga-line on the last day of the conference highlighted HIV treatment issues—the demand for antiretroviral drugs and a pressing need for food that is causing many women to delay or abandon treatment—and the keys to sustaining treatment: jobs, income-generating programs, microcredit and, of course, HIV education and training. Another hot-button issue: conflicts erupting in many countries over the right of positive women to have children.

The focus came back again and again to Africa. In sub-Saharan Africa, 60% of those living with HIV are women, and among 15- to 24- year-olds there, 75% are women. In Kenya, women are now five times more likely than men to have HIV. These numbers were not new to many, but reciting them lent urgency to the Nairobi 2007 Call to Action that emerged from the conference as a platform for building a powerful, global HIV women’s movement.

By the end of the conference, however, all eyes were on Mexico—the International AIDS Conference convening in Mexico City next August. And so the departing message was first Asante Sana (thank you in Kiswahili) and then Adelante! (onward in Spanish).