Resources

Despite the progress being made in the global response to HIV, stigma continues to be a major factor hindering HIV prevention, treatment, care and support, and affecting the overall health and wellbeing of people living with HIV. The media plays an important role in influencing people’s attitudes towards HIV, yet it is far from reaching its full potential. Many governments and funders prefer to focus on service delivery, which has measureable results, whereas it’s much harder to measure the impact of media initiatives that aim to bring about societal change. IPPF jointly with IBT (International Broadcasting Trust) has published this research report “HIV and Stigma: The Media Challenge”, which aims to provide an overview of media initiatives seeking the reduction of HIV-related stigma, while highlighting the case study of Swaziland.

Key facts and figures highlighting IPPF's achievements in 2013. IPPF provided 136.6m sexual and reproductive health services and averted 580,000 unsafe abortions.

This publication shares the experiences of people living with HIV. Men and women from Ethiopia, Mozambique and Swaziland talk about HIV-related stigma and describe their courage, inspirations, suffering, resilience and determination to trigger change. Their stories demonstrate how stigma and discrimination can hinder access to vital support and care and the prevention, testing and treatment of HIV. National and international organizations working on HIV-related issues have an immense responsibility towards people living with HIV, to change the unjust reality revealed by these personal stories into a better one. We must increase our efforts towards ensuring everyone enjoys a dignified, stigma-free life – one where every human being is valued and free of discrimination.

The key legal barrier to accessing services in the UK is the almost total prohibition on abortion in Northern Ireland and the need to travel to England and pay for abortion which disproportionately disadvantages young women. Lack of legally mandated comprehensive sexuality education, and lack of legal recognition of people who do not identify within the gender-binary norms or are intersex, also represent significant barriers to access. There are many permissive and facilitative laws and practices in the UK, which should ensure good access to SRH services, and are intended to be protective without hampering access to services, but access is compromised by other factors including: conflict between the stigma associated with younger aged sex (especially for girls) and media and peer cultures endorsing sexual activity bad delivery of sex education by teachers who are uncomfortable with the subject, which reinforces taboos concerns about the confidentiality of services in spite of legal obligations on service providers – especially in schools which often operate their own rules on reporting sexually active teens, and in small rural communities where service providers and pharmacists may know the young person’s family quality of service for LGBT youth may be poorer because of lack of knowledge or understanding of same-sex sexuality or non-binary gender identities most young people and service providers don’t see the law as an obstacle to services though beliefs about the age of consent does prevent some young people seeking SRH services the legal right of schools to refuse to teach CSE and of individual parents to withdraw children from classes reinforces the idea that informing young people about sex is corrupting and that young people have no independent rights regarding information and access to health services where CSE does exist it often focuses solely on the biological and inadequately addresses the law and young people’s rights within it young people report being reliant on information from the internet which includes poor sources of information and porn robust laws against sexual violence are undermined by victim-blaming and the low rate of rape prosecutions and convictions, which prevents people coming forward to report rape access to antenatal care is good and not perceived to be limited by legal issues Northern Ireland has different laws and practices to other parts of Britain and these are less permissive, more restrictive and more likely to present barriers to access. These reflect a more conservative culture which negatively impacts access even where it is not restricted by law. girls are more likely to conceal their or delay accessing services as all pregnancy options are stigmatised - young motherhood, adoption and abortion cultural and religious norms in Northern Ireland promote abstinence before marriage and reinforce stigma around youth sexuality which hampers discussion between young people and their parents the law in NI doesn’t require teaching of LGBT issues having to travel to specialist services represents a high cost, presents difficulties maintaining privacy and acting independently from parents and is a significant barrier for youth in rural areas especially in Northern Ireland which is underserved 

2013 was our second year implementing IPPF’s three Change Goals – Unite, Deliver and Perform. We have monitored the trajectory of our growth in performance to date, and are already seeing remarkable success in all three areas, as presented in our Annual Performance Report 2013-2014. Member Associations in 66 countries contributed to 97 changes in policy or legislation that support or defend sexual and reproductive health and rights. At the regional and global levels, IPPF’s advocacy contributed to 13 changes, of which ten were advances in safeguarding sexual and reproductive health and rights in the post-2015 development framework. With the delivery of 136.6 million services in 2013, we are on track to achieve our ambitious target of doubling the number of sexual and reproductive health services provided between 2010 and 2015. Eight in ten clients who accessed services were poor and vulnerable, and for the first time ever, almost half of our services went to young people. IPPF’s achievements in 2013 contribute to a strong performance culture where decisions are based on data, organizational learning happens at all levels, technical support is provided to increase effectiveness, and investments are made to support communities most in need.

This report – the first in our Vision 2020 series – focuses on why sexual and reproductive health and rights should be at the core of sustainable development from the outset. Without them, the lives of women and girls will be compromised, as will people’s ability to lift themselves out of poverty and to live sustainably within their resources. Our focus for this first report is goal 1 of Vision 2020 which calls on governments to ensure that by 2015 a new international framework includes sexual and reproductive health and rights as essential priorities.