UN launches first comprehensive web site on gender and HIV/AIDS

Furthering efforts to place gender equality at the core of the fight against HIV/AIDS, the United Nations today launched its first comprehensive

web portal that promotes understanding, knowledge sharing, and action on the epidemic as a gender and human rights issue.

"I believe that one of the most powerful HIV vaccines available today is women's empowerment," Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), said in announcing the launch of the web site. "By bringing knowledge and information to the global community, we are able to empower women."

Developed by UNIFEM in collaboration with the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the portal will provide researchers, policy-makers and practitioners access to cutting edge information.

"This online resource centre is a practical step forward by UNIFEM and UNAIDS together, designed to help improve the support for the millions of women around the world living with HIV and affected by the epidemic," UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot said.

Globally, half of all adults living with HIV/AIDS are women, and the UN agencies noted that the epidemic disproportionately affects women and adolescent girls who are socially, culturally, biologically and economically more vulnerable, and who shoulder the burden of caring for the sick and dying.

User-friendly, informative and interactive, the site offers research, training materials, surveys, advocacy tools, current news and opinion pieces by leading experts, and women's stories from the field.