What Oxfam is doing
Oxfam America's work on HIV and AIDS is centered in southern Africa. The program makes grants to organizations working on strengthening laws and policies designed to promote respect for women's rights and change the social norms and values that condone violence against women and girls and contribute to their lower social status. The program also supports initiatives that improve the social support services essential for assisting women who are infected and affected by HIV and AIDS, including law enforcement, access to health care, and counseling.
South Africa
Oxfam America’s work focuses on the North West, a province with an HIV/AIDS prevalence rate of 18 percent. Oxfam’s partners work with cultural leaders (chiefs and traditional healers) to change negative practices that increase the vulnerability of women to HIV/AIDS. Our partners also help people living with HIV/AIDS to get affordable treatment for opportunistic infections and HIV-related illness. Through a network of over 1,000 AIDS service organizations and individuals, Oxfam promotes a nondiscriminatory response to the HIV and AIDS epidemic based on people's basic human rights.
Zimbabwe
Oxfam America works with organizations in Zimbabwe to improve the rights of women through legal reform, as the consequences of gender inequality and patriarchy, such as gender-based violence, place women at particular risk of HIV infection. The introduction of a Domestic Violence Law (October 2007), following seven years of advocacy and lobbying by a coalition of women’s groups, now allows women to claim and defend their legal rights and protections. Coalition members have provided training for the judiciary, police, and traditional authorities, and members continue to support implementing the new law. Oxfam partners now represent civil society on the Anti-Domestic Violence Council, which will review cases of domestic violence, disseminate information, and promote assistance to victims in domestic violence cases.
Mozambique
The 2007 UNAIDS report notes prevalence is on the rise in Mozambique. Women in Mozambique remain susceptible to HIV/AIDS through the entrenched gender inequalities that exist in rural communities. A key strategy in dismantling this deep-rooted discrimination against women and girls has been to advance gender equality through legal reform. Oxfam America was instrumental in the formation of a coalition of partner organizations that pressed for the Family Law in Mozambique, and the coalition is now helping to educate women’s groups, traditional leaders, and judicial officers at district and provincial levels about the new law.
The Family Law provides for a broad range of women's rights, gives women equal status, recognizes the legitimacy of customary marriages, and protects spouses in the event of death or separation. The Women's Coalition in Mozambique is now pushing to make domestic violence a criminal offense and to have the country’s inheritance laws revised to secure the rights of widows.
