Research from Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania highlights opportunities to strengthen health, legal, workplace and digital systems to better protect privacy, dignity, safety and choice.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | Kampala, Uganda | 23rd Sept 2026
Women and girls living with HIV in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania are calling for stronger safeguards across health, legal, workplace and digital systems as new and evolving forms of violence emerge alongside changes in HIV service delivery, technology and the broader policy environment.
The call follows research commissioned by the International Community of Women Living with HIV Eastern Africa (ICWEA) under the THRIVE project, in partnership with ICW Kenya and DWWT Tanzania, supported by UN Trust Fund To End Violence Against Women and Girls.
A growing body of evidence shows that interventions aimed at improving HIV prevention and care can, paradoxically, reinforce or exacerbate structural violence against WLHIV. Policy measures such as Assisted Partner Notification (APN), while effective in enhancing partner testing and case identification, have also resulted in unintended consequences, such as relationship breakdowns, financial abandonment, and increased exposure to intimate partner violence, particularly where safeguards are insufficient. Similarly, HIV self-testing initiatives raise ethical concerns.
The research recognises the significant progress made in establishing HIV services, prevention programmes, legal frameworks and other systems intended to protect and support women. It highlights, however, that as these systems evolve, safeguards must evolve with them to ensure that well-intentioned interventions do not unintentionally expose women to new forms of harm.
These intersecting forms of structural, relational, and institutional control not only threaten the safety and dignity of WLHIV but also exclude them from feminist advocacy and leadership. As a result, critical lived experiences are erased from policy debates and movement spaces, weakening the potential for inclusive, transformative change.
“This is not a call to dismantle the systems that have been built. It is a call to make them safer, more responsive and more accountable to the women they are intended to serve.”
Take a read to our statement: Press Statement_New and evolving forms of violence against women and girls living with HIV Easern Africa
