COHRE Women and Housing Rights Fact Sheet No.10 HIV and AIDS

Housing rights ensure that women and girls are better able to mitigate the negative personal and financial impacts of HIV/AIDS

Violations of women’s rights to housing, land and property too often plunge women further into poverty and exacerbate the spread of HIV/AIDS As an integral part of the struggle against HIV/AIDS, States should enact laws that protect gender equality in access, ownership, control and use of housing, land and property

Women and Housing Rights and all that comes with it enhances personal autonomy and reduces many of the risk factors associated with HIV/AIDS. Critically, for women, the In the Context of HIV and AIDS realisation of housing and land rights may actually prevent HIV/AIDS gender discrimination and inequality, the transmission in certain cases by reducinternational community has come to ac- ing dependency and enhancing perknowledge that improving the status of sonal autonomy. women is a critical task in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Indeed, global HIV/AIDS Conversely, there is also a relationship response strategies have for the last two between HIV/AIDS and other develdecades attempted to integrate a human opment challenges disproportionately rights-based, and gender sensitive, ap- affecting women, including poverty proach to combating the pandemic. and lack of access to basic resources.

This reality exacerbates violations of When women’s housing rights are respect- women’s housing rights in the context The statistics are nothing short of ed, protected and fulfilled – including when of HIV/AIDS. For example, after the alarming. According to UN-AIDS, women and girls are able to inherit and death of the husband, family disputes women comprise about half of all peo- control housing, land and property – over housing and land are common, ple living with HIV worldwide. In sub- women and girls are better able to cope often resulting in the widow (herself Saharan Africa, where the pandemic is with the detrimental effects of HIV/AIDS. often ailing with the disease) being worst, they make up an estimated 57 per Because housing security leads to better forcibly evicted from the house by her cent of adults living with HIV, and three living conditions, access to livelihood and own in-laws. This leaves many women quarters of young people living with access to education, women and girls are in a terrible predicament — not only HIV on the continent are young women often better able to mitigate the negative homeless, but also struggling to live aged 15-24. Because the HIV/AIDS personal and financial impacts of with the disease.

Photo above courtesy of GROOTS Kenya pandemic is fuelled in part by systems of HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, a secure home

As a result of these problems, HIV/AIDS often worsens gender inequality. In event of death of a husband, in-laws and relatives may deny women their inheritance rights, send them away from their homes, physically and psychologically abuse them, and subject them to risky practices such as so-called ‘wife-cleansing’ (a traditional practice wherein a woman is required to have sex with a village ‘cleanser’ after her husband dies in order to be reaccepted into her community). For a woman who is herself living with the virus, even if she is able to hold on to her home and land, she is often forced to sell them in order to meet the costs of medical and other care for herself, her family and others, such as orphans in her care.

Women who disclose that they are HIV positive may be divorced by their husbands. They are also at times banished

women headed households, unmarried women and young women all merit special attention in this regard. Security of tenure guarantees women living with HIV a secure home in which to live.

Similarly, security of tenure with respect to land reduces women’s vulnerability to HIV/AIDS. Land allows women some measure of economic security, whether it means a woman is better able to access a loan, or simply growing enough food. from their communities, leaving them at times with no place to go. Widowed or unmarried women who are HIV positive may also be denied shelter by relatives and friends who fear being infected, or who otherwise wish to avoid the cost of caring for them when they fall sick.

Women’s rights to housing, land and property can be best upheld if there is a progressive and functional legal framework that guarantees women security of tenure, equal rights to housing, land and property. Widowed women, single

Women must be aware of the rights they have over housing, land and property in order to claim them. They need to know where to go to seek justice and should be assured of community support. States should enact laws that ensure gender equality in access, ownership, control and use of housing, land and property and there should be effective implementation of such laws.

Civil society groups should also continue to advocate on behalf of women’s housing, land and property rights as an integral component of the struggle against HIV/AIDS.