Windhoek — Women are increasingly clamouring for their sexual rights in a social environment that is often discriminatory and outright demeaning.

"Women should know about their sexual rights; it is very important especially for women in rural areas where men, more often than not, abuse women," commented Vicky Schimming after a week-long workshop on women's sexual rights, culture and HIV/AIDS in the capital last week.

The event forms part of a nationwide campaign for sexual rights, launched by the non-governmental organisation, Sister Namibia.

The aim of the campaign that started in 2000 with research on sexual-cultural practices, said Director of Sister Namibia, Liz Fank, is to develop critical thinking and analysis around sexual and cultural practices that violate women's sexual rights and fuel the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The campaign further aims to gather case studies for a Namibian sexuality resource handbook and build capacity to conduct local workshops on the link between HIV/AIDS, poverty, oppressive cultural practices and sexual violence.

"Everyone talks about the need to change behaviour to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS, but there is hardly any discussion on the need to change harmful sexual cultural practices that are often the drivers of the disease," Frank said.

"Almost 50 percent of women in the Caprivi Region, as a case in point, are HIV-positive, but no one asks why."

One harmful practice in the Caprivi Region, said Frank, is what is referred to as mulaleka, a practice that condones incest.

This, she said, is a cultural mechanism to make women understand from babyhood that their bodies belong to men.

Another detrimental practice, said Ngondi Ngatjiheue from the Otjozondjupa Region, is that in Otjiherero culture women are not allowed to make their own sexual choices.

"Sex is difficult; you cannot ask to have sex with your husband, and you cannot refuse him when he wants sex," said Ngatjiheue.

Insistence on the use of condoms, she said, is out of the question.

"If you insist, your husband or partner will accuse you of infidelity. It is only a small percentage of men who will accept the use of condoms," she said.

The more than 40 women from as far as Gam and Onderombapa felt that the practice of 'inheriting a widow' should be changed.

"Widows are not forced per se to be 'taken over' by their late husband's brothers, but they are placed under immense cultural pressure to acquiesce," said Ngatjiheue.

According to the 2007 National HIV/AIDS policy, traditional leaders should be sensitised on the dangers of customary practices like death cleansing, forced sex for young girls and boys coming of age, and dry sex, which may lead to HIV/AIDS infection.

The policy prescribes that traditional initiation councillors must incorporate sound and appropriate sexual and reproductive health education into traditional and cultural rites of passage.

It further prescribes that such initiation councillors should stop or change unsafe customary practices to stop the spread of HIV, or to promote alternative practices that do not place people at risk of infection.