Your latest communication on the intersection of violence to women and girl and HIV-AIDS has missed out the widespread violence that WIDOWS suffer when their husbands have died of AIDS or when they have been raped and tortured in the context of armed conflict and ethnic cleansing and infected, made pregnant or permanently disabled.
RAPED widows are often ostracised by the families who should be supporting them Widows in many traditional societies suffer multiple discriminations and violence simply because of their widowed status. Often they are forced to submit to inhuman, degrading and sexually violent mourning and burial rites. To being inherited in a forced marriage to a brother-in-law. Where a husband died of AIDS, widows in some communities in South Asia and Africa may risk being accused of "killing" them through witchcraft or alleged acts of promiscuity. Many widows have been killed or chased out of their homes in this scenario. Widows' daughters are also greatly at risk, as poor girls without a fathers protection, forced to leave school, and exposed to rape or early marriage with AIDS infected men influenced by the myth that sex with a virgin will cure them. Please let this network not forget the terrible violence that WIDOWS and DAUGHTERS are exposed to in the context of HIV/AIDS I am attending a Conference on WIDOWHOOD AND AIDS in Zambia next month. For details of this contact Sara Longwe at <sara&[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. Also think of the terrible experiences of widows in Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, East Timor, Afghanistan , widowed, raped, tortured, evicted, beaten, pauperised and stigmatised. There is mental torture as well as physical, and sexual torture. Margaret Owen WIDOWS FOR PEACE AND RECONSTRUCTION Founder of EMPOWERING WIDOWS IN DEVELOPMENT (EWD) www.oneworld.org/empoweringwidows ***End-violence is sponsored by UNIFEM and receives generous support from ICAP*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe end-violence OR type: unsubscribe end-violence Archives of previous End-violence messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/end-violence/hypermail/
