International Women’s Day: Rights, justice, and action for women and girls

GENEVA, 6 March - Globally, in 2024, around 4,000 adolescent girls and young women newly acquired HIV every week-3,300 of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa, where women and girls make up around two in every three new HIV infections.

The statistics do not end there.

• Nearly one in four adolescent girls experiences physical or sexual violence before the age of 20.
• According to UNFPA, fewer than half of women globally are able to make their own decisions about sex, contraception and health care.
• Punitive laws continue to fuel the HIV epidemic and undermine sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Such inequality is not a law of nature, it is a consequence.

This is what happens when women and girls are denied rights and denied justice.

When a girl cannot stay in school because of violence, when a woman cannot negotiate safer sex, when a survivor of violence cannot access healthcare and justice-HIV risk rises.

"HIV thrives where gender inequality persists," said Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS. "On this International Women's Day let us honor all those organising for justice, defending rights, and supporting healthcare in the hardest of circumstances. Let us support community leadership and community outreach and the women spearheading such movements. Let us reform unjust laws. Protect services. Defend rights. Because ending AIDS and building a just world begins with rights, justice, and action for all women and girls."

As the world prepares for the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70) and the new Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS, UNAIDS calls on governments, donors, and partners to reaffirm that justice is a right, not a privilege. Ending all forms of violence and ensuring legal empowerment and access to justice for women and girls in all their diversity, are inseparable from the fight to eliminate the inequalities within the HIV response.

Together, we can build a world where every woman and girl - including every woman and girl living with and affected by HIV - lives free from violence, fully in control of her rights, choices, and future.

Rights. Justice. Action. #ForAllWomenAndGirls.

UNAIDS

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizations-UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank-and works closely with global and national partners towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more at unaids.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.