Roundup: Namibia's First Lady engages the grassroots on social problems

Namibia's First Lady Monica Geingos has upped her bid to help the country solve its social problems through working with grassroots groups and several institutions.

Geingos, who was appointed as the UNAIDS Special Advocate for Young Women and Adolescent Girls in Sept. 2016, has put together an advisory council made up of community activists from the country's 14 regions.

The activists drawn from various fields were announced Friday and will go back to the regions to work with the communities and report back to Geingos three times a year.

She also signed an agreement with the safety ministry that allows her to work with the correctional services in rehabilitating offenders.

Speaking after the signing the agreement at State House in Windhoek Friday, Geingos said: "The purpose of the agreement is to establish a framework on the cooperation between the two parties and also to inform policy and to conduct joint public violence and anti-crime campaigns to address perceptions."

Namibia could be one of the very few countries in the world where gender-based violence is very high. A week hardly passes without news of a woman killed by a boyfriend.

When she addressed the first ever National Judicial Conference in Aug. this year in Windhoek, Geingos pointed out that headlines about women being killed have become "so regular that sustained outrage is reserved only for cases with the most shocking details."

She felt at the time that more needed to be done if the country is to overcome the problem of gender-based violence since the courts alone and all the policies in place now have not been effective.

"If violent crimes and the abuse of women and children are the norm that is a reflection of who we are as a society ... a collective is needed to put a stop to the violence," she said.

By appointing an advisory council, Geingos is living up to the stance and sentiments she made known during the judicial conference.

The advisory council will work with her office on addressing social injustice, gender-based violence and economic inequality.

Another major concern to Geingos has been the hundreds of prisoners in the country's jails. She has personally visited some of the jails.

In Nov. 2015, Geingos wept when she visited the Windhoek Correctional Services where some of the men serving time for killing their girlfriends are. She also engaged with those serving time for other crimes such as theft, rape and robbery.

She told the prisoners that she had come to get to the root cause of the gender-based violence that has the nation mourning.

"If we understand the perpetrators, we will be able to protect a lot of victims. We all have self-destructive behaviors and we all have the right to be listened to. Things cannot go on the way they are right now. Today I hope to engage some of the inmates to hear their side of the story," she said then.

She further said she believed many people who are prisons were not supposed to be there, had the nation listened and seen the signs when they showed them.

"I also understand and I am well aware that there are sociopaths and psychopaths who cannot be helped. Those that we can save, we must," she said.

It was because of her visits to prisons that Geingos saw the need to work with the authorities in rehabilitating the inmates.

The Windhoek Correctional Services has more than 800 inmates whose age ranges from 21 to 40.

Her other major concern is the teenage pregnancies. In Oct. this year, Geingos spoke at an event called a Day of Dialogue on Teenage Pregnancy in Namibia organized by the United Nations Population Fund.

A teenage mother herself, Geingos said people should stop blaming teens who fall pregnant but that parents should engage children on sexuality.

A 2013 study showed that 19 percent of Namibian teenage girls had fallen pregnant.

She recounted how it was when she discovered that she was pregnant.

"I was the head girl at school and the hostel. Imagine how embarrassing that was. But here I am today. To the teenagers, let me tell you something today: when you get into a relationship, it's just you and that person, and the only thing that will protect you is the information you have," she said. Endit