Migrants’ situation in Thailand is precarious. Due to their tenuous legal status and numerous barriers that limit access to health services and legal mechanisms, migrants endure poor working and living conditions without being able to receive full or proper treatment for related health conditions. With a sense of loss of control over their life, and without being able to access health information and services in their own language, migrants’ vulnerability to HIV and other reproductive health conditions increases, as does their susceptibility to contagious diseases and other health problems.

Violence against female sex workers (FSWs) can impede HIV prevention efforts and contravenes their human rights. We developed a multi-layered violence intervention targeting policy makers, secondary stakeholders (police, lawyers, media), and primary stakeholders (FSWs), as part of wider HIV prevention programming. This study examined if violence against FSWs is associated with reduced condom use and increased STI/HIV risk, and if addressing violence against FSWs within a large-scale HIV prevention program can reduce levels of violence against them. FSWs were randomly selected to participate in polling booth surveys. 

The VAW project team was commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) South Pacific office in July 2010, to conduct a host of VAW activities as components of the Project in Fiji. This report is one of the main outcomes of that partnership between the College of Medicine, Nursing & Health Science (formerly known as Fiji School of Medicine) /Fiji National University, Ministry of Health Fiji and WHO.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) against women is a global public health and human rights concern. Despite a growing body of research into risk factors for IPV, methodological differences limit the extent to which comparisons can be made between studies. We used data from ten countries included in the WHO Multi-country Study on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence to identify factors that are consistently associated with abuse across sites, in order to inform the design of IPV prevention programs.

Gender-based violence (GBV) is well recognised as a human rights violation and a public health problem with legal,
social, cultural, economic and psychological dimensions. Violence against women and girls cuts across class, race, religion and ethnicity and is today no longer viewed as a private matter. Among the impacts are a wide range of health consequences including sexually transmitted infections (STIs), HIV and AIDS, unintended pregnancies, psychological disorders, deprival of sexual and reproductive rights and diminished well-being. The severe costs of violence against women incurred by children, families, communities and the state are thus well demonstrated and thoroughly documented by the data.

Despite the numerous activities being carried out by the Health Ministry of Mongolia with the assistance of WHO, the National Traumatology and Orthopedic Teaching Hospital (NTOTH) and many other international institutions, it is clear that the statistics of violence, traffic and household injury show a trend to growth rather than decline. If no efficient and timely measures are undertaken, violence and injury ranking today as the third leading cause of mortality, may jump to the second position within the next year or two at most.

Female sex workers (FSWs) are a population sub-group most affected by the HIV epidemic in India and elsewhere. Despite research and programmatic attention to FSWs, little is known regarding sex workers’ reproductive health and HIV risk in relation to their experiences of violence. This paper therefore aims to understand the linkages between violence and the reproductive health and HIV risks among a group of mobile FSWs in India. Data are drawn from a cross-sectional behavioural survey conducted in 22 districts from four high HIV prevalence states (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu) in India between September 2007 and July 2008. The survey sample included 5,498 FSWs who had moved to at least two different places for sex work in the past two years, and are classified as mobile FSWs in the current study.

In June 2008, IDLO initiated a scoping process with organizations and international agencies working in the HIV sector in PNG, with a view to discussing the context of the epidemic and possible areas of intervention. IDLO met with representatives of the Law and Justice Sector, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the PNG Business Coalition Against HIV & AIDS (BAHA), the University of Papua New Guinea, School of Law (UPNG), and the Department of Justice and Attorney General‟s Office. Stakeholders agreed that ensuring the rights of vulnerable groups and PLHIV is critical to effectively addressing the HIV epidemic in PNG.

This draft background paper is one of several in a series commissioned by the World Health Organization for the World Conference on Social Determinants of Health, held 19-21 October 2011, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The goal of these papers is to highlight country experiences on implementing action on social determinants of health. Copyright on these papers remains with the authors and/or the Regional Office of the World Health Organization from which they have been sourced.

In just three decades, over 30 million people have died of AIDS, and 34 million more have been infected with HIV.  The HIV epidemic has become one of the greatest public health challenges of our time. It is also a crisis of law, human rights and social justice. The good news is that we now have all the evidence and tools we need to radically slow new HIV infections and stop HIVrelated deaths. Paradoxically, this comes at a time when bad laws and other political obstacles are standing in the way of success.