HIV/AIDS and Women's Human Rights Experts Return from Kenya and Rwanda
Contact:
Irene Schneeweis,
Media Coordinator
PHONE: 212-627-0444
EMAIL: media@madre.org
February 1, 2005, New York. At the dawn of Bush's second term, MADRE, an international women's human rights organization, returns from Kenya and Rwanda with first-hand accounts of how US policies have exacerbated public health crises and led to an increase in HIV/AIDS and unsafe abortions.
Women in Kenya and Rwanda report a severe lack of access to HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention amidst rising incidents of HIV/AIDS in their communities. In Kenya, women are twice as likely to become infected as men; Indigenous women living in rural areas are particularly vulnerable to HIV-infection due to poverty, isolation, and discrimination. Rwanda�s HIV/AIDS crisis�further entrenched by mass rapes committed during the 1994 genocide�continues to plague Rwandan women who are urgently in need of live-saving HIV/AIDS treatment and education.
Bush�s policies have intensified Africa�s HIV/AIDS crisis by: relying on expensive drugs patented by US pharmaceutical companies instead of lower-cost generics; pushing ideologically motivated abstinence programs instead of the proven "safe sex" approach; and denying funding to healthcare organizations that provide abortions, abortion counseling, or advocate legalizing abortion via the �global gag rule�. Cuts in family planning programs have not only led to more unwanted pregnancies and illegal, unsafe abortions (which kill 5,000 Kenyan women a year), but jeopardized already limited access to HIV/AIDS treatment and other critical services. In Kenya alone, seven clinics�which provided a wide range of healthcare services (not including abortion) to thousands of poor women and their families�were forced to close as a result of the gag rule.
MADRE Executive Director, Vivian Stromberg, MADRE Program Director, Monica Aleman, and MADRE Board Member Marie Saint Cyr conducted a series of trainings on: HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, reproductive health, and international human rights for women survivors of the Rwandan genocide and Indigenous Kenyan women.
In Kenya, MADRE works with the Indigenous Information Network to promote women�s health and human rights in Samburu, Maasai, Rendille, Turkana, and other Indigenous communities.
In Rwanda, MADRE partners with BENIMPUHWE to provide HIV/AIDS and human rights trainings and promote self-sufficiency among women, many of whom were made homeless and heads of families after the Rwandan genocide.
MADRE is an international women�s human rights organization that works in partnership with women�s community-based groups in conflict areas worldwide. Our programs address issues of armed conflict and forced displacement; women's health and reproductive rights; economic justice and community development; Indigenous Peoples' rights and resources, food security and sustainable development; human rights advocacy; youth; and US foreign policy.
Vivian Stromberg, MADRE's Executive Director, has worked for over 40 years as an activist in the peace and justice movement. Her areas of expertise include women's economic development, US foreign policy, health care, popular education, sexual violence, human rights and child development. Interviews Available.
Monica Aleman, MADRE�s Program Director, is an Indigenous Miskitu woman from Nicaragua, with extensive experience in the international arena around issues of women�s human rights and the collective rights of Indigenous Peoples. Interviews Available.
Marie Saint Cyr is an international HIV/AIDS expert, a member of MADRE�s Board of Directors, and Executive Director of Iris House in New York City, the first community-based organization in the US founded by and for women and families infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. Interviews Available.
