The Women’s Leadership Centre has launched a project on women and HIV/AIDS and also held a workshop on those issues from 12 to 14 October. The workshop was attended by 30 women living with or affected by HIV/AIDS from all over Namibia, and it will result in a storybook as well as a social reader on gender, sexuality and HIV/AIDS. Elizabeth Khaxas, director of the Women’s Leadership Centre, said,”HIV/AIDS is a disease of inequality and marginalisation. Eradication of gender inequalities 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.” Increasing poverty in Namibia is one of the reasons that puts women and girls at risk,” Nadia Ihuhua, one of the workshop participants, said.” 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. According to the press statement, the workshop participants demand that government makes women’s employment a priority.Many years after the Combating of the Domestic Violence Act and the Rape Act have been passed, hundred of thousands of Namibian women are still not aware of how these Acts protect them, it is stated in the press release. In the meantime, violence against women and children continues unabated in this country. Roswita Ndumbu from Rundu said, 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 countrywide 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.According to the press release, stigmas still has a deadly effect on our people because people are afraid to go for testing, which can save lives. Khaxas said that 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 lifesaving 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.