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Gender Policy Key in Fighting HIV/AIDS
Emma Kakololo
2005-10-21

The Women's Leadership Centre (WLC) has called for the full and urgent implementation of the National Gender Policy to ensure that Namibian women enjoy full human rights that would enable them to survive the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

The appeal followed a two-day workshop last week on 'Women's Rights, HIV/AIDS and Writing' attended by 40 women who are living with or affected by HIV and AIDS from all over the country. 

One of the objectives of the conference was to come up with a storybook as well as a social reader on gender, sexuality and HIV/AIDS in Namibia. 

Speaking at the workshop, the Director of the Women's Leadership Centre Elizabeth /Khaxas said HIV/AIDS was a disease of inequality and marginalization and that the eradication of gender inequality must become the main strategy for preventing the spread of the disease. 

Women and girls who know and can exercise their rights will understand their right to life as a right to struggle for, /Khaxas said. 

An appeal was also made to Government, particularly the Ministry of Health and Social Services, AIDS service organisations, NGOs, industry and civil society to promote the culture of rights and gender equality as an integral part of their work on preventing and treating HIV and AIDS. 

Post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) is not available in all the hospitals in the country. Many doctors are also not sure about how to how to administer these life-saving medicines. Women have the right to PEP, and it is not a privilege in cases where women have been raped or when condoms have failed, /Khaxas said. 

Participants also demanded that Government make women's employment a priority as women and girls are at great risk due to increasing poverty in the country. 

Said Nadia Ihuhua, one of the workshop participants: Women who are dependent on boyfriends and husbands will not have the courage to demand the use of condoms. You cannot say no to unprotected sex at night and ask your boyfriend in the morning to give you taxi money. 

Delegates noted that despite the Combating of the Domestic Violence Act, hundreds of thousands of Namibian women were still not aware of how the Act can protect them while in the meantime, violence against women and girls was continuing unabated in the country. 

Domestic violence makes especially married women vulnerable to HIV, because they cannot insist on condom use for fear of being beaten up. These unacceptable levels of violence against women and children cannot be tolerated anymore. We need a country-wide campaign to educate all women and girls on these Acts as well as on their human rights so that women can actually use them to protect themselves from violence as well as from HIV and AIDS, said Roswita Ndumbu a participant from Rundu. 

We call on all organisations working on women's rights as well as HIV and AIDS to work towards creating a compassionate and enabling society in which women and men exercise their right to life by freely exercising responsible choices for prevention and treatment. There is also an urgent need to train health workers in ethics of confidentiality and counselling as well as service to people of this land, a participant Doriana Dausas said, adding that people were afraid to go for testing because of stigmatisation. 

HIV and AIDS have a deadly effect on our people because people are afraid to go for testing, which can save lives, she said. (Source: New Era 19 October 2005).

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