This is the final in a three part #GenderMatters series to introduce and demystify CEDAW for women and girls living with HIV. Video #3 features Olena Stryzak as well as a very helpful series recap, and is hosted by Sarah Thapa Magar and Saidy Brown.

This is the second in a three part #GenderMatters series to introduce and demystify CEDAW for women and girls living with HIV. Video #2 features Eugenia Lopez Uribe, and is hosted by Sarah Thapa Magar and Saidy Brown.

This is the first in a three part #GenderMatters series to introduce and demystify CEDAW for women and girls living with HIV. Video 1 features Ishita Dutta, and is hosted by Sarah Thapa Magar and Saidy Brown.

This video was originally created for ICW's AIDS 2020 booth to slow the power and diversity of our membership. Together we are ICW.

For World Mental Health Day the Beyond LIVING partnership, a global advocacy platform between GNP+, ICW, and Y+ Global, worked with our Life Force to highlight the impacts of mental health on people living with HIV around the world. Through this video we want to stress the importance of universal mental health access for all and its importance especially for our community.

"Through our campaign #GenderMatters we want to highlight how gender inequality and patriarchy underscores our health outcomes and intensifies the diverse issues women living with HIV experience in relation to our other intersecting identities." 

Supporting mental health and emotional well-being is one of the most overlooked aspects of treatment, care and support within the HIV response. HIV diagnosis can cause trauma, anxiety and depression, or exacerbate existing anxiety and mood swings and mental health disorders. Anxiety and self-stigma around job and housing security, self-esteem, status disclosure and building healthy romantic relationships, including fear and anxiety due to HIV criminalization, can affect the mental health, self-esteem and emotional well-being of people living with HIV. Even within HIV activism and the workplace, we replicate traumas and social inequalities perpetuating cycles of oppression, trauma and stress on those within our community. In this session, women living with HIV will share their lives work through research and advocacy in the realms of mental health and resilience in the context of gender -based violence, HIV criminalization, health care violations, sex worker, poverty and inter-movement aggression. Lillian Mworeko, Uganda, Mental Health and SRHR Olena Stryzhak, Ukraine, Gender Based Violence + HIV Sara Thara Maga, Nepal, Young Women and Mental Health Vanessa Johnson, USA, Macro and Micro Aggression and Movement Trauma - Lateral Violence Chair: Morolake Odetoyinbo, Nigeria/US