Achieving sexual and reproductive health and rights for women and girls through the HIV response

The case studies that follow, from across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Europe and Central
Asia, Latin America and North America, highlight the rich diversity of community initiatives that
bridge sexual and reproductive health and rights and HIV. The report has a strategic emphasis
on the innovation that is being led by women living with HIV and features pioneering endeavours
that reflect community and key stakeholder interpretation and understanding of how this
intersection is defined. It profiles initiatives that have emerged from within the HIV sector as it
broadens out to encompass a sexual and reproductive health and rights approach, as well as
initiatives that have emerged from within the women’s health and rights sector as the latter has
taken on HIV-related services and programmes; showing that both sectors are taking steps to
integrate services and build synergies.
The strategies profiled cover and demonstrate a broad spectrum of the overlap between sexual
and reproductive health and rights and HIV. The case studies in Chapters 1 and 4 address how
gender-based violence, harmful gender norms and taboo issues affect women as causes and
consequences of HIV. The importance of prioritizing women on the margins and engaging young
people through comprehensive sexuality education is also investigated in Chapters 3 and 7. The
case studies profiled in Chapter 5 demonstrate HIV-positive mothers in the United Kingdom and
Uganda providing leadership and peer support around positive pregnancy. Elsewhere, the report
examines how reproductive justice for women of colour, promoting the rights of sex workers and
members of sexual minority communities and better integration across intersecting movements
are being achieved.
The main lesson to draw from this broad range of strategies is the importance of community
engagement and the key leadership role that women living with HIV have to play in tailoring the
HIV response to their needs. When HIV and sexual and reproductive health and rights providers
come together to empower affected communities to take the lead, enabling environments are
created that help to open discussion, improve knowledge of the issues affecting women living
with HIV, and ultimately improve access to comprehensive and holistic services that advance
women’s and girls’ health and rights. Effective initiatives include training members of the
community as advocates, providing safe arenas for open discussion and engaging men as codrivers
of social change.
Through documenting and expanding our understanding of and approaches to the intersection
of sexual and reproductive health and rights and HIV, it is hoped that efforts toward integration
of services will be strengthened in practice. This is a unique opportunity to give community
innovation and leadership greater attention and thus help to champion gender equality and
achieve health and human rights for all.