Mr. James D. Wolfensohn
President
The World Bank
1818 H Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20433 U.S.A.

[Date]

Dear Mr. Wolfensohn:

I am gravely concerned about domestic violence and its impact on women’s vulnerability to HIV infection. Millions of women around the world are raped and battered by their intimate partners, while violence, or the threat of violence, prevents them from protecting themselves from sexually transmitted diseases and from freely seeking HIV/AIDS treatment and counseling. This leaves them especially vulnerable to HIV infection.

In many countries, women who have no rights to property and are unable to live independently, may be forced to remain in abusive relationships that expose them to sexual intercourse with HIV infected men. Traditional practices in some countries such as “widow inheritance” also expose women to unprotected and unwanted sex with HIV-positive partners. These devastating practices violate women’s human rights, doom development efforts, and undermine the fight against HIV/AIDS. Many governments fail in any meaningful way to criminalize or prosecute violence against women in the home, and ignore the role of violence, and, in particular, unwanted sexual relations in marriage, in exposing women to HIV-infection.

The World Bank can play a critical role in eliminating domestic violence and creating an environment in which women can protect themselves from HIV/AIDS. In its efforts to promote women’s economic development and human rights, the World Bank should:

• Work with governments to ensure that development policies and programs are designed and implemented to address domestic violence against women, and that concrete steps are taken to eliminate discriminatory laws and customs that undermine development efforts, specifically in the area of women’s equal marital and property rights;

• Urge governments to adopt and enforce legal sanctions against perpetrators of domestic violence; and

• Speak out publicly on the role of domestic violence in transmitting HIV to women, support the adoption and enforcement of laws specifically prohibiting domestic violence, and emphatically condemn discriminatory laws and customs that encourage the subjugation of women in the home.

For the sake of women around the world, I urge you to put domestic violence against women and its impact on HIV transmission high on the World Bank’s agenda.

Sincerely,