{"id":47,"date":"2005-05-11T15:35:05","date_gmt":"2005-05-11T20:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/2005\/05\/11\/aids-now-compels-africa-to-challe"},"modified":"2005-05-11T15:35:05","modified_gmt":"2005-05-11T20:35:05","slug":"aids-now-compels-africa-to-challenge-widows-cleansing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/2005\/05\/11\/aids-now-compels-africa-to-challenge-widows-cleansing\/","title":{"rendered":"AIDS Now Compels Africa to Challenge Widows’ ‘Cleansing’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I had no idea that the practice of the relatives of the deceased sleeping with widows was that widespread. Hard to imagine that the practice could be condoned. I don’t think it is cultural imperialism for outsiders to suggest this is a bad idea. The best turn is that local actors are now starting to believe this as well. From the Times<\/EM><\/A>:<\/P>
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Here and in a number of nearby nations including Zambia and Kenya, a husband’s funeral has long concluded with a final ritual: sex between the widow and one of her husband’s relatives, to break the bond with his spirit and, it is said, save her and the rest of the village from insanity or disease. Widows have long tolerated it, and traditional leaders have endorsed it, as an unchallenged tradition of rural African life. <\/P>
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Now AIDS is changing that. Political and tribal leaders are starting to speak out publicly against so-called sexual cleansing, condemning it as one reason H.I.V. has spread to 25 million sub-Saharan Africans, killing 2.3 million last year alone. They are being prodded by leaders of the region’s fledging women’s rights movement, who contend that lack of control over their sex lives is a major reason 6 in 10 of those infected in sub-Saharan Africa are women. <\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had no idea that the practice of the relatives of the deceased sleeping with widows was that widespread. Hard to imagine that the practice could be condoned. I don’t think it is cultural imperialism for outsiders to suggest this is a bad idea. The best turn is that local actors are now starting to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-and-policy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}