“How are women expected to negotiate safer sex if they are refused the power to negotiate the very act of sex?” asks JASS Regional Coordinator, Shereen Essof as JASS Southern Africa‘s partner, MANERELA+, presented a key paper that underlines the correlation between the legal impunity of marital rape and the high prevalence of HIV in Malawi at the Global Commission on HIV and Law’s Africa Regional Dialogue. This important submission focuses on women’s lack of autonomy within relationships and calls on law reforms that define the age of consent and criminalize marital rape to allow women to stand equally under the law with ownership of their own bodies.
