COVID-19 is not only a health issue, just as HIV never was. It impacts on a wide range of human rights, and although it affects all people, it does so unequally. Women and girls in all their diversity are experiencing the greatest impact of the crisis. COVID-19 has highlighted the stark inequalities across societies, with a lack of pandemic preparedness and fragile or non-functioning institutions posing graver impacts.
ADDRESSING THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON WOMEN AND GIRLS IN ALL THEIR DIVERSITY: A HUMAN RIGHTS IMPERATIVE
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is having devastating social and economic consequences worldwide. Yet the numbers of infections and deaths alone do not provide an accurate picture of the pandemic’s vast gendered impact. While the available data suggest that men experience higher rates of COVID-19-related deaths (1), women and girls are bearing a disproportionate burden of the larger impacts of the pandemic and states’ emergency responses (2).
This guide is designed to provide recommendations to governments to confront the gendered and discriminatory impact of COVID-19. It highlights good practices; shares lessons learned from HIV and other past public health crises; provides strategic information; calls for engagement with communities most impacted by COVID-19; and sets forth concrete immediate and forward-looking recommendations for crisis responses, policy development and investment strategies. The guide presents six key areas of concern regarding the human rights of women and girls in all their diversity during the COVID-19 pandemic—differing needs of women and girls, particularly those most marginalized; access to essential health services; the neglected epidemic of gender-based violence against women and girls; misuse of criminal and punitive laws; adolescent girls’ and young women’s education, health and well-being; and valuing women’s work and making unpaid care work everybody’s work.
The gender-specific analysis and recommendations contained here are informed by valuable insight gained from the global HIV response recognizing that many of the same structural drivers of inequality in the HIV epidemic are the same as those driving inequality in the current COVID-19 pandemic. Neither COVID-19 nor HIV can be overcome without prioritizing the most marginalized populations, and recognizing that people have diverse experiences and needs. Along these lines, we should avoid adopting uniform responses that fail to account for local contexts and guarantee the human rights of everyone affected by the crisis and its response (3).
Just as HIV held up a mirror to stark inequalities and injustices, the COVID-19 pandemic will be exacerbated unless we address head-on the human rights impact on women and girls in all their diversity and their lack of access to health services, education, protection from violence, and social, economic and psychological support (6). These lessons align with the United Nations Secretary-General’s call to focus on the most marginalized people (7) and to centre women and girls in COVID-19 recovery efforts (2).
UNAIDS calls on states, law- and policy-makers, key stakeholders, funders, development actors, communities and civil society to act urgently to mitigate the pandemic’s impact on the most marginalized women and girls as we navigate a world overcome by COVID-19 into the post-pandemic future. All emergency measures, including their design, implementation, execution and monitoring, must include a gender perspective and take an intersectional approach that accounts for the contexts and conditions that enhance the effects of this crisis. Critical steps must also be taken to ensure advancements towards gender equality and the realization of women’s and girls’ human rights are not rolled back during this time.
WOMEN AND GIRLS IN ALL THEIR DIVERSITY
Women and girls are not a homogeneous group, and they face multiple forms of discrimination. While everybody is vulnerable to COVID-19, people are far from equally affected by pandemic responses. There are stark gendered disparities, and the most marginalized people are the hardest hit. Women and girls are at heightened risk of domestic violence, inadequate access of essential health care (both before and during the pandemic), COVID-19-related punishment, economic insecurity, and the imposition of unpaid and unrecognized care work. Combine this with the stigma and intersectional discrimination that marginalized women and girls (including transgender and gender-diverse people, lesbians, bisexual people, sex workers, women and girls with disabilities, women living with HIV, women who use drugs, refugees, migrants, women and girls in conflict zones, detention and humanitarian settings, indigenous women and women from other racial and ethnic minorities, and adolescent girls and young women) already face, and we can see that women and girls are undeniably being “left behind” (4, 5).