The “Securitisation” of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Critical Feminist Lens

This paper offers an account of how the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is understood as a threat to security, placing the various accounts of the securitisation of AIDS in the context of the human security situation in SSA. The first section examines in a very general way, the context of the “security crisis” of AIDS in Africa. The second part identifies the ways in which the HIV/AIDS pandemic is being “securitised”, and some of the potential implications of emerging security discourses for HIV/AIDS policy on the continent. It closes with an account of some of the more critical human security accounts on HIV/AIDS in SSA and finally, suggests how a critical feminist lens might broaden and deepen these perspectives.