Our Values | ICW | International Community of Women living with HIV

Our Values

Values of ICW

Our policies are intended to benefit all members regardless of culture, age, religion, sexuality, disability, social or economic status, class or race.

Accountability

ICW staff, governing bodies and members are accountable for their actions and use of funds in fulfilling their legal obligations.

Self Determination and Emancipation

ICW values the transformative leadership and power of women living with HIV in realizing our rights. We will act in solidarity to create opportunities to attain all our human rights and to maintain these rights. We value peer support, mentoring and capacity building as ways to enable our members to become more self-determined in their lives.

Integrity and Critical Reflection

Our accountability is entrenched in our principles and interwoven in our practices. We will work together united as a global movement, remembering to take the time to reflect critically on our lessons learned both as individuals and as a network.

Feminisms and Gender Equality

We are committed to raising consciousness about gender imbalance and inequalities. We commit to using schools of feminist thought to critique current systems that continue to oppress women and girls living with HIV.

Commitment to Advocacy

This commitment is founded on the knowledge that advocacy is a potent tool to promote the rights of women living with HIV and to influence and impact policy and programming decisions. Our commitment is focused on ensuring that as women living with HIV we have a voice and meaningful participation in the relevant decision-making and policy-making bodies on issues important to our lives. We are committed to creating alternative spaces for power relations in order to set the agenda on matters that concern us.

Self-Care

We value the time and tremendous energy that women give to ICW. Individual self-care is important for women living with HIV to sustain motivation and support the work they are doing to improve the lives of other women. It is of equal importance that we support our peers and ourselves to ensure we are able to maintain a healthy physical, mental and spiritual balance in work, play and caring for our loved ones. ICW strongly advocates self-care for women living with HIV in the advocacy movement.

See also

  • Vision and Mission

    Our key strategies to build a world for all women living with HIV.

  • Network of Regions

    We are a network of individual women living with HIV, but we have a shared, collective agenda and work collaboratively at the local, national, regional and global levels.