Call for articles Sexual Health Exchange

Sexual Health Exchange is a quarterly newsletter on HIV/AIDS and sexual health in developing countries, aimed at professionals in the field of HIV/AIDS prevention, care and support based in NGOs, CBOs, governmental organisations, international NGOs and UN agencies. More information about Sexual Health Exchange can be found below and on our website.

For its coming issue on girls and young women (No. 3, Fall 2004) we are calling for articles and information. If you know someone who is a specialist in one of the issues mentioned below or if you know a programme/project that is considered a good practice in your country, please send contact details and a short description of the programme to the editor.

If you would like to submit an article yourself (max. 1200 words), please read the information below and send a short outline (max. 200 words) to the editor explaining who you are and what will be the proposed topic of your article. If you have any information in electronic form about your organisation, programme or thematic interests, please feel free to include it.

Deadline for outlines is 15 April, deadline for articles 15 May 2004.

Girls and young women:
Although at the global level as many women as men are living with HIV, in several regions of the world, including sub-Saharan Africa, over 50% of those living with HIV are women. Young women and girls are especially vulnerable to HIV infection. At the moment, two-third of newly infected individuals are young people and among them, almost two-third are young women aged 15-24 years. This means that some 43% of all newly infected people are women below the age of 25. This is one of the reasons UNAIDS has chosen women and girls as its focus for the 2004 World AIDS Campaign. 2004 is also the year that organisations and meetings worldwide are taking stock of progress in the implementation of the ICPD Plan of Action, which was developed ten years ago during the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo. The ICPD was a landmark conference as it stated loud and clear that sexual and reproductive health is a human right and that access to sexuality and reproduction-related information and services should be made available to everybody, including women and adolescent girls.

Several factors contribute to the vulnerability of girls and young women to HIV/AIDS, among which:

• physical immaturity, which promotes STI infection;
• young age of sexual debut and marriage;
• lack of basic education;
• lack of information on safer sex;
• lack of access to protective measures and lack of power to discuss protection;
• large age differences between sexually active girls and their partners;
• economic necessity to have unprotected sex with older, wealthy males ( Sugar Daddies );
• sexual violence, containing sexual abuse, coerced sex, rape, female genital mutilation and sexual exploitation.

The high HIV prevalence and incidence among young women show that existing HIV prevention and protection efforts are failing to stem infections among them. Because of their lack of social and economic power, many women and girls are unable to negotiate relationships based on abstinence, faithfulness and use of condoms. Furthermore, it has become increasingly clear that a lot of sexual contacts between girls and their partners take place in an environment of violence, (peer) pressure, and economic instability. What can be done to stem the tide? What are successful strategies to address the vulnerability factors mentioned above?

This issue of Sexual Health Exchange aims to illustrate the complexity of HIV prevention for girls on the one hand, and show examples of successful and inspiring policies, approaches and programmes on the other hand.

The forthcoming issue: Please note that we have two main categories: Special Articles (focusing on issues/problems and examples/solutions) and Programme Features (focusing on concrete programmes/projects and their lessons learned). Examples of possible articles in each category are:

• Special Articles: Changes in attitudes towards child marriage in a certain region or country - promising approaches in increasing access to reproductive health care and information for girls - forced sex (e.g., date rape ) as a cultural phenomenon and how to involve boys in its elimination - influencing family gender socialisation by a certain programme in a certain country - the Sugar Daddy phenomenon and what can be done about it - successful girl-focused peer education approaches - state of affairs regarding female genital mutilation in general or in a certain country - trafficking of girls for prostitution and how it can be tackled - a successful national strategy in addressing sexual and reproductive health and rights of one of its components, etc.
• Programme Features, descriptions of well-working programmes of sufficient scope and scale that are perceived by others as good practices: girl-friendly integrated reproductive health services - a school-based sexual violence prevention programme - sexual counselling for young married couples - a theatre performance or TV show to address young boys attitudes towards girls and sex - the role and achievements of a certain NGO in addressing one of the issues mentioned above, etc.

Deadline for outlines: 15 April 2004
Deadline for article submission: 15 May 2004

I look forward receiving your outlines and advice!