Secretary General Kofi Annan marked International Women's Day on Monday by highlighting the increasing numbers of girls and women living with - and becoming infected by - HIV.
"Even a decade ago, statistics indicated that women were less affected," Annan said, "but a terrifying pattern has since emerged. All over the world, women are increasingly bearing the brunt of the epidemic.
"If these rates of infection continue, women will soon become the majority of the global total of people infected," he predicted.
Last year, more than half of the estimated five million new HIV infections were amongst women. UNAIDS currently estimates that half the 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS are female. In sub-Saharan Africa, 58 percent of those living with HIV are women.
Annan said that women are now carrying the burden of HIV/AIDS, “usually because society's inequalities put them at risk: unjust, unconscionable and untenable risk.”
“There are many factors, including poverty, abuse and violence, lack of information, coercion by older men, and men having several partners," he added. "Society pays, many times over, the deadly price of the impact on women of HIV/AIDS."
Annan added that girls and young women now account for nearly two-thirds of people worldwide below the age of 24 who are living with HIV.
"What is needed is real, positive change that will give more power and confidence to women and girls, and transform relations between women and men at all levels of society," he argued, calling for "change that will strengthen legal protection of women's property and inheritance rights.
He also asserted that men must take responsibility for their role in the women’s HIV epidemic, and "ensure an education for their daughters, abstain from sexual behaviour that puts others at risk, (and) forgo relations with girls and very young women.”