Working Committee on Gender

This program is no longer active.

The CSIS Task Force on HIV/AIDS Working Committee on Gender was chaired by Janet Fleischman, CSIS Senior Associate. The committee on gender worked to raise policy attention and develop U.S. policy options to integrate U.S. efforts in combating HIV/AIDS with sexual and reproductive health services (SRH), as an essential component of PEPFAR.  Its short-term outcomes (objectives) were the following:

  1. Identify promising programs that have integrated SRH and HIV services for women and girls in affected countries

  2. Develop benchmarks for strategic integration of SRH and HIV services to be included in U.S.-funded programs

  3. Support integration as a strategic goal and incorporate into Washington debates the perspectives of champions from countries acutely affected

  4. Focus on adolescent girls as an acutely vulnerable group, and develop pragmatic policy recommendations to mitigate risks to youth

The work outlined above will culminated in a series of events from June through September 2006. In June 2006, in the run up to the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto, the CSIS Task Force issued series of reports and hosted a major conference on the achievements of PEPFAR to date and the most urgent challenges.  The reports addressed the critical question of sustainability, and the integration and strengthening of reproductive health services within PEPFAR's strategy to serve not only the goal of sustainability, but also the equally important goal of addressing the acute vulnerabilities of women and children.