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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Anne K. Eckman, PhD, Director of HIV Advocacy/Policy Project, Futures Group, One Thomas Circle, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005, 202-775-9680, akeckman@starpower.net and Molly Reilly, JD, Just Associates, 2040 S Street NW, Suite 203, Washington, DC 20009.

Although recognized as crucial to confronting HIV, practical approaches linking women's inheritance rights advocacy to HIV remain under-developed. Further, when inheritance rights advocacy is undertaken, it often focuses on legal change alone to secure women's rights, or on awareness raising and information sharing to equip women and communities with the skills to enact change. Yet, time and again advocates find that neither laws nor information alone are sufficient to build on-the-ground, sustainable change to promote and ensure women's property and inheritance rights. Rather, transformative approaches linking the analysis of multiple levels of power, conscientization, and community organizing are crucial to making women's rights real at the community level.

Based on an 18-month pilot intervention and its process evaluation, this presentation will share approaches, tools and lessons learned from the Kenya Inheritance Rights Initiative (KIRI) – an innovative, participatory HIV and women's inheritance rights initiative among an international organization (POLICY Project) and a diverse range of 20+ Kenyan community organizations including community health, education, women's and legal rights organizations. The pilot demonstrated that, with its citizenship-building approach and structured processes of participatory analysis, it is possible to involve a broad group of women and men in identifying and analyzing key barriers to the realization of rights and developing concrete plans to address culture, power and practice at the level of community institutions and social structures. This presentation will also consider how the lessons learned from rights-based advocacy in this international context translate into a domestic US context.

Learning Objectives: Learners will be able to

• appreciate the importance of assessing institutional and cultural structures as well as the content of policy in order to ensure the implementation of rights at the community level.
• become familiar with practical tools that facilitate participatory community analysis and planning in order to develop advocacy that addresses cultural and institutional structures.
• apply lessons from this international experience to a domestic context in the US.

Keywords: Advocacy, Human Rights

Related Web page: www.policyproject.com/pubs.cfm

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No