GENEVA, 6 March 2025– Ahead of International Women’s Day, 8 March, UNAIDS is calling for renewed efforts towards gender equality and access to HIV services for women and girls.

Great progress has been made in preventing new HIV infections among women and girls in the past two decades. New HIV infections dropped by 63% among adolescent girls and young women between 2010 to 2023. However, women and girls remain most vulnerable to HIV. In sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls and young women aged between 15-24 years are three times more likely to be newly infected with HIV than men and boys the same age. Every week 4000 young women and girls become infected with HIV globally, 3100 are in sub-Saharan Africa.

As funding for the AIDS response remains uncertain, UNAIDS urges support for women and girls to stop new HIV infections, ensure access to treatment and stop gender-based violence which leaves women and girls more at risk of HIV infection.

“There is a deep injustice faced by women and girls - their vulnerability to HIV,” said Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS. “But when we support girls and enable them to complete secondary school, we keep them safer from HIV, from teenage pregnancy, from violence and child marriage. That means HIV programmes for women and girls need to be fully funded and expanded and that women and girls must be able to access the prevention and treatment tools that meet their specific needs. This includes new prevention tools - such as the new long-acting injectable HIV prevention technologies. HIV is a feminist issue, and we cannot wait any longer for gender equality!”

This year marks the 30^th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Adopted in 1995 in China’s capital city by 189 governments, the declaration remains one of the most progressive blueprints for women and girls’ rights worldwide. Rooted in the experiences and demands of women and girls, the Beijing Declaration outlined 12 critical areas for action and affirmed women’s right to live free from violence. ‘Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights,’ was the rallying cry for feminists at that conference. It still is.

The world cannot wait for another 30 years to fulfill the promise of gender equality. It is key to continue advancing women and girls’ rights, promote gender equality, foster empowerment; and ensure that young women and girls can access the life-saving HIV services they need.