Pressure for new HIV/AIDS law in Swaziland
Swazi women march against royal extravagance in face of grinding poverty and HIV/AIDS . Four out five of the marchers are on AIDS drugs
Mantoe Phakathi
Mantoe Phakathi
(Who attended the 'Reporting HIV/Aids" workshop in Bangkok in November)
The Government of Swaziland should speed up the process of finalising the Sexual Offences Bill if the country is serious about curbing gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS. This is the stand by the Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse (Swagaa), a non-governmental organisation which is fighting against the abuse of women and girls in the country.
Swagaa public relations officer Hlobisile Dlamini-Shongwe says the Swazi Government should heed to this year’s World AIDS Day theme and “take the lead” by protecting women and girls from HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence.
“The Sexual Offences Bill has been in the drafting stage for close to five years now,” she says. “This bill proposes stiffer sentences against perpetrators of violence and also criminalises some acts that were hitherto not criminal offences.”
The Sexual Offences Bill also calls for the criminalising, among other things, of marital rape and intentionally infecting another person with HIV. These two matters have raised quite a stir in the country with traditionalists frowning upon criminalising such issues. But civil society is adamant this will help decrease the rate of gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS.
Dlamini-Shongwe says gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS are inseparable because a lot of women get HIV through violent means by the perpetrators of rape, and the fact that women fail to negotiate for safer sex because they are treated as minors by their husbands. More women than men are keen on taking an HIV test yet, when wives disclose to their spouses that they are infected with the virus, they get physically abused. As a result 31 percent of women among the reproductive age group 15 to 49 years are infected with HIV/AIDS as opposed to 20 percent of their male counterparts.
“In all the eight years that I’ve worked for Swagaa, I’ve never come across a rape case where the perpetrator has used a condom,” says Dlamini-Shongwe.
The escalating number of reported rape cases, which stood at 663 last year, is the reason the women's movement in the country says government should take the lead in protecting women and girls from both HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence.
However, the slow grinding machinery of government is delaying the legislative process. Attorney General Majahenkhaba Dlamini says some bills take longer than 20 years “because some issues are too personal to the Swazi people and this makes drafting the bill to take longer.”
It remains to be seen what will become of the process.
END
0 responses to "Pressure for new HIV/AIDS law in Swaziland"
Please note that comments should not be regarded as the views of Reuters.
Leave a Reply
When you submit a comment to us we request your name, e-mail address and optionally a link to a website. Please note where you submit a website address, we may link to it via your name. By sending us a comment, you accept that we have the right to show the comment and your name to users. Although we require your email address, this will not be published on the site, and is only required to enable us to check facts with you, e.g. if you are making a claim we can not confirm easily. Additionally, if you would like your comment removed at anytime, you'll have to use this e-mail address when you contact us. To remove a comment at any time please e-mail us at blogs-(at)-reuters-(dot)-com (address obscured to avoid spam) specifying who you are and what you would like removed. We moderate all comments and will publish everything that advances the post directly or with relevant tangential information. We reserve the right to edit comments in order to maintain the quality of the comments, and may not include links to irrelevant material. We try not to publish comments that we think are offensive or appear to pass you off as another person, and we will be conservative if comments may be considered libelous. Reuters will use your data in accordance with Reuters privacy policy. Reuters Group is primarily responsible for managing your data. As Reuters is a global company your data will be transferred and available internationally, including in countries which do not have privacy laws but Reuters seeks to comply with its privacy policy.