First Lady appointed UNAIDS advocate for girls and women

While attending the 71st session of the United Nations in New York, the executive director of UNAIDS, Michel Sidibe, appointed the First Lady of Namibia, Monica Geingos, as the UNAIDS special advocate for young women and adolescent girls.
Geingos is set champion the newly launched Start Free, Stay Free, Aids Free Agenda by UNAIDS.
UNAIDS said her role will be to “use her position as a UNAIDs special advocate to improve the health of adolescent girls and young women”.
“Young women and adolescent girls face the conflicting realities of a world that is increasingly recognising gender equality while living in societies that continue to deny them the attainment of this shared right,” Geingos commented on the welfare of girls and women in many societies.
Although the First Lady said she was excited about signs that the tide was changing in terms of patriarchal attitudes to the treatment of girls and women in society, “the risks faced by our young women and adolescent girls remain disproportionately and unacceptably high”.
The main aim of the UNAIDS programme is to put the world on a fast-tracked plan to end Aids among children, adolescents and young women by 2020.
The agenda seeks to eliminate new HIV infections among children, reduce the number of new HIV infections among adolescents and young women, and also looks to provide antiretroviral therapy for 1.6 million children and 1.2 million adolescents with HIV by 2018.
Geingos said it was an honour to team up with UNAIDS to work towards a generation free from Aids.
Sidibe expressed his delight at being able to work with the First Lady, saying that “she will be using her platform to find partners and solutions to some of the difficult health issues facing young women and adolescent girls today”.
He added that “young women and adolescents around the world have a new champion and we look forward to supporting her work”.