December 1, 2010 at 5:01 pm

To help the fight against AIDS, fight for their secure land rights.

How can women’s vulnerability to HIV/AIDS be reduced by securing their land rights? When women have the legal rights to own and control land, it is critical to their ability to avoid and cope effectively with crises like HIV/AIDS. Women’s property rights should be part of any integrated HIV/AIDS response.

To learn more about how improved land rights can help combat the threat of HIV/AIDS, read this two-page brief on a case study conducted in Uganda and South Africa:
http://www.icrw.org/files/publications/Womens-Property-Rights-HIV-and-AIDS-and-Violence-in-South-Africa-and-Uganda-Preliminary-Findings.pdf

Consider this:
• Women’s lack of property rights deprives women of the bargaining power that could reduce their risk of contracting HIV. Research suggests that the empowerment effects of women’s property ownership can help women protect themselves against risky sexual activity. (There is a link between women’s property rights and vulnerability to HIV infection in situations where women are unable to negotiate safe sex with their partners due to fear of violence or eviction.)

• If a husband dies of AIDS, the wife may be more likely to engage in risky behavior, such as transactional sex for food, in order to provide for herself and her children.

• In many African countries, where HIV rates are very high, when a husband (or male head of household) dies of AIDS, the woman and her children lose their rights to the house and land and are evicted by relatives. Since the majority of farming in Africa is done by women, this can leave women unable to provide food for themselves and their children.

• Under customary law, women’s access to land is conditioned by her ability to farm it. (In other words, use it or lose it) A woman may lose access to her land if her husband or child has AIDS and she needs to provide nursing care, or if she herself has AIDS, and is unable to farm. For example, in Tanzania, women whose husbands were sick due to AIDS spend 45% less time farming. (ECOSOC 2004)

• The costs of HIV/AIDS (medicine, nursing care, transportation to a hospital, etc.) often force women to sell household assets to cope with the expenses, exacerbating their poverty. In some cases, they are even forced to sell their land.

• If a poor family is in need of extra income because someone in the household has contracted HIV and is manifesting the symptoms of AIDS, it may be an incentive to marry off young daughters who would otherwise be left in school or not married for several more years.