Domestic Violence and Women’s Vulnerability to HIV-infection in Uganda

Take Action Now!

What you can do to protect women from violence in the home and create an environment in which women can protect themselves from HIV/AIDS. Click on the links below for sample letters.

• Urge members of your country’s parliament and other officials to condemn domestic violence and to ensure that donor assistance is targeted to end these violations. If you live in the United States, write a letter to the President, the Secretary of State, or your congressional representative. Click here to find contact information for members of the U.S. Congress.

• Urge Uganda’s president, its minister of justice and constitutional affairs, its minister of health, and its minister responsible for gender issues to advocate that Uganda’s laws and customs be changed to better protect women from domestic violence and the transmission of HIV.

• Urge the leaders of other countries where women are not protected from domestic violence to change their laws and practices to better protect women from violence in the home.

• Urge the World Bank and other donor agencies to make domestic violence and women’s vulnerability to HIV a central part of their plans as they mobilize to help African countries combat HIV/AIDS and promote development. Click here to find contact information for donor agencies.

If you can, please send copies of your letters to the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch in New York (350 Fifth Avenue, 34th Floor, NY, NY 10118) or by e-mail at wrd@hrw.org.

If you have suggestions for new actions people can take to end domestic violence, please contact wrd@hrw.org (attention Lisa Karanja).

(Last updated on )