Legal Knowledge, Needs & Assistance Seeking among HIV Positive & Negative Women in Umlazi, South Africa
BACKGROUND:
The
rights of women and people living with HIV (PLHIV) are protected under South
African law, yet there is a gap in the application of these laws. While there
are numerous systemic and social barriers to women's and PLHIV's exercise of
their legal rights and rights to access social services, there has been little
effort to document these barriers as well as legal needs and knowledge in this
context.
METHODS:
1480
HIV-positive and HIV-negative women recruited from an antenatal clinic in
Umlazi Township completed a questionnaire on legal knowledge, experience of
legal issues, assistance seeking for legal issues, and barriers to seeking
assistance. We compared the legal knowledge and experience of legal issues of
HIV-positive and HIV-negative women, and described assistance seeking and
barriers to assistance seeking among all women.
RESULTS:
Both
HIV-positive and HIV-negative women had high levels of knowledge of their legal
rights. There were few important differences in legal knowledge and experience
of legal issues by HIV status. The most common legal issues women experienced
were difficulty obtaining employment (11 %) and identification documents
(7 %). A minority of women who had ever experienced a legal issue had
sought assistance for this issue (38 %), and half (50 %) of
assistance sought was from informal sources such as family and friends. Women
cited lack of time and government bureaucracy as the major barriers to seeking
assistance.
CONCLUSIONS:
These
results indicate few differences in legal knowledge and needs between
HIV-positive and HIV-negative women in this context, but rather legal needs
common among women of reproductive age. Legal knowledge may be a less important
barrier to seeking assistance for legal issues than time, convenience, and
cost. Expanding the power of customary courts to address routine legal issues,
encouragement of pro bono legal assistance, and introduction of legal
navigators could help to address these barriers.
- 1Department of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 331 Rosenau Hall, CB #7440, Chapel Hill, 27599, NC, USA. hilllm@email.unc.edu.
- 2Department of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 331 Rosenau Hall, CB #7440, Chapel Hill, 27599, NC, USA. maman@email.unc.edu.
- 3University of KwaZulu-Natal Law Clinic, Durban, South Africa. holness@ukzn.ac.za.
- 4Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. moodleyd1@ukzn.ac.za.
- BMC Int Health Hum Rights. 2016 Jan 22;16(1):3. doi: 10.1186/s12914-016-0077-z.
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