From Developmentalism to the HIV/AIDS Crisis

Contrasting the socio-political contexts of large-scale development and the HIV/AIDS crisis in Lesotho, our analysis captures important historical conjunctures that expanded opportunities for the mobilization of women's rights as human rights. Local women's rights organizations, such as Women and Law in Southern Africa (WLSA), found greater support and resonance for women's rights claims amid the socio-political context of the AIDS crisis, in marked contrast to the stifling of those same claims during a period of neoliberal, nationalist development initiatives in Lesotho. The AIDS crisis in particular introduced new international actors that helped support a 'frame bridging' strategy whereby women's rights were characterized as health rights, rooted in a critique of the AIDS crisis that identified the role of gender inequality as an important driver of the epidemic. These links to transnational feminist networks as well as to international health agencies bolstered the critiques of gender inequality articulated by WLSA and other women's rights advocates, helping usher in a series of legal changes in Lesotho in 2003 and 2006. Adapted from the source document.