A Background to “Stategies from the South”
GOAL:
To promote a dialogue between Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Rights, GLTB, Human Rights, and HIV/AIDS activists about sexuality and sexual rights and health as related to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This South-South dialogue will bring together representatives of networks from Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean. This project will encourage a proliferation of this dialogue on a regional level as participating network representatives advance this approach and advocacy collaboration in local arenas.
OBJECTIVES:
1. To develop a working relationship between the activists and researchers of these movements.
2. To come to an agreement about the approaches (including the prioritized advocacy strategies, target groups and research topics) which will lead to effective activism, study, and advocacy on behalf of women and youths, the most vulnerable populations.
3. To develop an approach for dealing with the HIV/AIDS vulnerability of specific groups encompassed by these topics: children, adolescents and adult women’s: housewives, heterosexuals, and others.
4. To come to a partnership between the participants movement and network representatives so that they can share approaches to carry out advocacy, activism and research and create a basic plan for the dissemination of this approach in their own constituencies and throughout regional dialogues.
5. To articulate a theoretical framework that incorporates all these visions and publish this framework in a report.
6. In cases of disagreement, to specify the problems, the differences, and the accords that will lay out the basis for future advocacy, activism, and research.
The project has been developed by FEIM and coordinated by a group of three women’s health and HIV/AIDS activists, one from each region: Asia, Africa, and Latin America/Caribbean. They are:
• Dr. Mabel Bianco, Fundación para Estudio e Investigación de la Mujer – FEIM, Argentina
• Meena Saraswathi Seshu, Sampada Graneen Mahila Sanshta –SANGRAM-, Sangli, India
• C. Dorothy Aken ‘ova, International Center for Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights –INCREASE − and member of Amanitare Steering Committee, Nigeria
