A lack of protection and promotion of young women’s and adolescent girls’ rights and autonomy continue to present a challenge to a Fast-Track approach to ending the AIDS epidemic, according to experts at a World Health Assembly side event held in Geneva, Switzerland.
Participants stressed how enhancing the availability of HIV services for adolescent girls and young women is not enough. Data show that less than 30% of currently married adolescent girls and young women aged 15–24 years have a final say regarding their own health care at the household level.
Age restrictions, including parental and spousal consent, inhibit access to HIV and sexual and reproductive health services. Furthermore, studies show that women who have been exposed to intimate partner violence are 1.5 times more likely to acquire HIV. Globally, 20% of the world’s married or partnered young women are estimated to have experienced physical or sexual violence by a partner in the past 12 months.
According to the participants, there are promising programmes that work to transform gender norms and reduce HIV incidence among young women and girls. For example, community programmes that focus on reducing partner violence and cash transfer programmes that provide girls with economic empowerment and autonomy.
Entitled Adolescent Girls’ Health: Approaches to Ensuring the Future She Deserves, the event was cosponsored by UNAIDS.
“Every adolescent girl deserves our full investment right now to realize the healthy future she deserves, so that she can reach her full potential.”
Pamela Hamamoto, United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva
“UNAIDS and partners are committed to ensuring that adolescent girls’ and young women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights are enshrined in our collective efforts to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030.”
Luiz Loures, UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director
