Africa

ICRW, along with a consortium of organizations, led the Parliamentarians for Women's Health project, which sought to assist select parliamentarians in East and southern Africa to more efficiently improve women's and girls' access to health services, particularly HIV and AIDS treatment, prevention, care and counseling.

Other publications in this series:
Parliamentarians for Women's Health, Project Paves the Way for Change
Networking Proves Vital Strategy to Improving Women's Health Care
Parliamentarians Use Local Assessments to Connect with Their Communities
Workshops Bolster Parliamentarians as Leaders on Women's Health

This report synthesizes the results of five community-based interventions that aimed to improve the micronutrient status of women and children by analyzing the intra-household dynamics that contribute to nutrition distribution in the household.

ICRW, in partnership with organizations in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zambia, led a study of HIV and AIDS-related stigma and discrimination in these three countries. This project, conducted from April 2001 to September 2003, unraveled the complexities around stigma by investigating the causes, manifestations and consequences of HIV and AIDS-related stigma and discrimination in sub-Saharan Africa. This synthesis report presents the principal findings from the research.

This literature review assesses the extent of sexual relations between adolescent girls and older male partners (cross-generational sex) in sub-Saharan Africa; the extent of transactional sex; and the behavioral dynamics of girls and men involved in these sexual relations. Over 45 quantitative and qualitative studies of cross-generational and transactional sexual relations were reviewed.

There is an urgent need to accelerate efforts to reduce stigma and discrimination of HIV/AIDS. This report seeks to describe best practice and distil the key lessons. It provides a useful tool for those working on HIV and AIDS to incorporate a strong focus on tackling stigma and discrimination in their work.

Prevention of mother-to-child transmission must be part of the standard package of care for HIV-positive women. ICRW and the Population Council offer recommendations to policymakers and program managers on how to include community participation, education and mobilization in efforts to prevent mother-to-child transmissions.

Women in many countries are far less likely than men to own property and assets - key tools to gaining economic security and earning higher incomes. Though laws to protect women's property rights exist in most countries, gender and cultural constraints can prevent women from owning or inheriting property. In this series, ICRW suggests practical steps to promote, protect and fulfill women's property rights.

Other publications in this series:
Women's Property Rights as an AIDS Response, Emerging Efforts in South Asia
Women's Property Rights, HIV and AIDS, and Violence in South Africa and Uganda: Preliminary Findings
Women's Property Rights as an AIDS Response, Lessons from Community Interventions in Africa
Learning How to Better Promote, Protect and Fulfill Women's Property Rights
Mending the Gap Between Law and Practice, Organizational Approaches for Women's Property Rights

ICRW summarizes the findings of a research study that examined how gender issues influenced volunteers' decisions to participate in AIDS vaccine research in Kenya and their experience of participation. These results may help facilitate the integration of women in vaccine research in similar settings. The study was conducted in Kenya in 2007 as a collaboration between ICRW, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and the University of Nairobi.

This report, a synthesis of findings from research in four countries, presents evidence suggesting that HIV and AIDS-related stigma is far less varied and context-specific than may have been imagined. In fact, there are many more similarities than differences across these contexts in the key causes of stigma, the forms stigma takes, and the consequences of stigma.